From the Assistant Principal's Desk:
Zones of Regulation: A Tool To Help You Check-in With Your Child
I hope all parents have had some time to themselves this week to check in on their own wellbeing. The teachers are all very aware of the enormity of the task you undertake with supervising remote learning for your children and are so appreciative of your support.
For those children who sometimes struggle to talk about how they feel you might find this tool helpful and your child or children will be familiar with the language that it uses as it is a common tool that is used in our classrooms.
The Four Zones: Our ‘Feelings & States’ Determine Our Zone
The Red Zone is used to describe extremely heightened states of alertness and intense emotions. A child may be experiencing elation or anger when in the Red Zone.
The Yellow Zone is also used to describe a heightened state of alertness and elevated emotions, however one has more control when they are in the Yellow Zone. A child may be experiencing stress, frustration, anxiety, excitement, silliness, the wiggles, or nervousness when in the Yellow Zone.
The Green Zone is used to describe a calm state of alertness. A person may be described as happy, focused, content, or ready to learn when in the Green Zone. This is the zone where optimal learning occurs.
The Blue Zone is used to describe low states of alertness and down feelings such as when one feels sad, tired, sick, or bored.
All of the zones are natural to experience, but the poster focuses on teaching students how to recognize and manage their Zone based on the environment and its demands and the people around them. For example, when playing on the playground or in an active/competitive game, students are often experiencing a heightened internal state such as silliness or excitement and are in the Yellow Zone, but it may not need to be managed. However, if the environment is changed to the library where there are different expectations than the playground, students may still be in the Yellow Zone but have to manage it differently so their behavior meets the expectations of the library setting.
The poster above shows some of the strategies and language we use at Good Samaritan to talk about our feelings, what zone we are in, how do we know and what can we do to get back to the green zone to be “ready to learn”.
If your child is struggling this week to maintain a learning focus when it is time to learn tr using this. Hopefully it will help.
Listen to Leo explain why he is in the Green zone