Feelings are complicated; they come in lots of different intensities, levels of energy and responses from our bodies.
Increasingly, I was finding that children were struggling to manage their emotions, and although the children seemed to be coping with the day-to-day aspects of school life, parents were reporting that children were coming home from school emotionally drained, tired and unable to express how they were feeling.
I wanted to find a way for children to gain an understanding of how they were feeling and, more importantly, for them to be able to talk about their emotions and normalise the range of emotions they were experiencing. That’s where Zones of Regulation came in: a curriculum which helps pupils recognise and understand their emotions.
The idea is brilliantly simple: we sort emotions into 4 coloured categories and introduce children to tools to regulate and manage them.
Children are taught that no emotion is ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’, but some may not be appropriate in certain situations. For example, whilst being over-excited may not be appropriate in the classroom, on the morning of their birthday, it is lovely to see ecstatic children opening presents. Children are shown how to adjust their emotional state to a more suitable ‘zone’, allowing them to achieve short or long term goals, such as calming themselves down and reducing their energy using breathing techniques to move into the ‘blue’ zone in order to, for example, go to sleep.
We introduced Zones of Regulation into the Pre-Prep in 2022 and the children responded well, talking freely about how they were feeling, supporting others as well as themselves. We were amazed by how our pupils used Zones to self-regulate. They now had a common language that could be used by staff and pupils to discuss emotions, fostering better communication and understanding. Zones now runs through the whole school, giving pupils from 3-16 the tools to understand their emotions, instead of fighting or supressing them.
At Crosfields, pastoral care has always been a cornerstone of its educational approach. Zones of Regulation can be seen in practice across the school, in calm zones in classrooms, sensory toolkits readily available for children to use, in Forest School sessions where children take advantage of being outside in our extensive grounds to regulate themselves, tuning in to how they feel.
“Zones of Regulation has given us a framework to simplify the complexity of emotions so that children can articulate them to others, then manage or seek help with them. Already, the lived experience of our pupils has transformed thanks to this powerful tool, not just for the youngest children, but up to Year 11,” said Janey McDowell, Head of Pre-Prep.
Staff at the school have all undertaken Zones of Regulation training, and sessions are held regularly for parents to enable them to use the zones in their own home. All of this fosters an environment that nurtures pupils and prepares them for the world beyond school, where even as adults, we never stop learning how to experience and regulate our emotions.
– by Mrs Bennett