Zones of regulation

At St. Matthew's Bloxam C of E Primary School, we recognise the importance of promoting positive mental health and emotional wellbeing to our students and their families. We aim to create an open culture around the discussion of mental health and wellbeing and to empower our children be able to regulate their emotions. By implementing the Zones of Regulation curriculum we aim to teach our pupils to identify emotions in themselves and others and provide them with bank of strategies to help regulate their emotions and improve their wellbeing.

The Zones of Regulation is a range of activities to help your child develop skills in the area of self-regulation. Self-regulation can go by many names, such as self-control, self-management and impulse control. It is defined as the best state of alertness of both the body and emotions for the specific situation. For example, when your child plays in a basketball game, it is beneficial to have a higher state of alertness. However, that same state would not be appropriate in the library.

The Zones of Regulation is a curriculum based around the use of four colours to help children self-identify how they’re feeling and categorise it based on colour. The curriculum also helps children better understand their emotions, sensory needs and thinking patterns. The children learn different strategies to cope and manage their emotions based on which colour zone they’re in. Additionally, the Zones of Regulation helps children to recognise their own triggers, learn to read facial expressions, develop problem-solving skills, and become more attuned to how their actions affect other people.

There is progression across the curriculum with children in Early Years learning to identify different emotions to children in Upper Key Stage 2 discussing how our behaviour can impact upon the feelings of those around us.

What are the four Zones?

GREEN ZONE

The green zone is used to describe when you are in a calm state of alertness. Being in the green zone means you are calm, focused, happy, or ready to learn. This is predominantly the state you want your child to be in. It’s also the state most needed in the classroom in order to learn.

YELLOW ZONE

The yellow zone describes when you have a heightened sense of alertness. This is not always a bad thing and you still have some control of your actions when you’re in the yellow zone.

Being in the yellow means you may feel frustrated, anxious or nervous. However, it could also mean you are feeling excited, silly, or hyper – which is okay in the right situations.

RED ZONE

The red zone describes an extremely heightened state of intense emotions. When a person reaches the red zone, they are no longer able to control their emotions or reactions. Being in the red zone means you are feeling anger, rage, terror, or complete devastation and feel out of control.

BLUE ZONE

The blue zone, on the other hand, is used when a person is feeling low states of alertness. When you are in the blue zone you may be feeling down – sad, sick, tired, or bored. You are still in control, as you are in the yellow zone, but with low energy emotions.

How to help at home? 
Talk through the zones with your child. Ask them how they would feel in each zone?

• Discuss what emotion they feel in each zone e.g. in the yellow zone I may feel worried
• How they physically feel e.g. in yellow zone I may have butterflies in my stomach or have sweaty palms (if feeling anxious).
• Then discuss what might they be doing- what be their actions e.g. in yellow zone would they be pacing around, snapping at others, fidgeting?
• Then discuss how to help them move into the Green zone e.g. if I was in the Yellow zone and feeling anxious I might find competing some yoga stretches/ breathing techniques helps me get back into the green zone.
• Create a list of strategies that work for the child- Remind the child that we are all unique and the strategies that work for one person might not help them so they need to think about what would help them.

Remind them that we will experience all zones and there are no good or bad zones - however our success in regulating our emotions depends on us recognising our emotion, understanding it and putting a support strategy in place.