Zones of Regulation

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What is The Zones of Regulation framework?

The Zones of Regulation is a complete social-emotional learning curriculum, created to teach children self-regulation and emotional control.

 

It is used in Cambridge Road to help identify the needs and emotions of our children to teach a variety of social-emotional skills, starting with early emotional skills and advancing to self-regulation and navigating social situations.

Parents can also use and teach The Zones of Regulation at home, too. Implementing strategies across different environments increases the success of the program and the emotional well-being of our children.

 

What does it teach children?

  • Identifying your emotions by categorising feelings into four coloured zones (blue, green, yellow and red).

  • Self-regulation: Achieving the preferred state of alertness (zone) for a situation. This is all about regulating your body and emotional regulation.

  • Identifying triggers: Learning what makes you feel the way you do and why.

  • Coping strategies: Various techniques and strategies that help achieve emotional regulation and manage strong emotions.

  • Size of the problem: Introduces the idea that the size of your reaction should match the size of your problem, how to identify the size of your problem, and strategies for problem-solving.

  • Expected behaviour vs unexpected behaviour: This also covers perspective taking and how your behaviour affects the thoughts and feelings of the people around you.

 

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How do we use the Zones of Regulation at Cambridge Road?

We display shapes with the colours of each Zone in each classroom. The children are encouraged to check in by moving their names to a corresponding Zone (in KS1). In KS2, we encourage a verbal check-in. This helps children to identify and name their emotions and enables teachers understand how their pupils are feeling and support them as needed. We also display some strategies next to the Zones which aim to help children to self-regulate.

 

All staff members of Cambridge Road use the language of The Zones of Regulation and encourage children to describe which Zone they are in. We also provide 1:1 and small groups support using ZoR strategies in our sensory corridor when needed.