By Charlotte Bennett, Year 2 teacher at Crosfields School in Shinfield, Reading.
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. 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.
Zones of Regulation 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 then adjust their emotional state to a more suitable ‘zone’ to then calm themselves down or reduce 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 now have a common language that could be used by staff and pupils to discuss emotions, fostering better communication and understanding. Zones 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 can be seen in practice across the school, in calm zones in classrooms and in Forest School sessions where children enjoy outdoor learning in our extensive grounds.
“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, from Nursery 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. We never stop learning how to experience and regulate our emotions, so we believe in starting that process as children.
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