Dear Parents and  Carers,

What a great week we had last week with all our students returning to face to face learning. A big part of the week was settling back into school routines, ensuring that students were understanding the importance of handwashing and social distancing wherever possible.

Across the school we have taken particular focus on the wellbeing of students. This has included understanding emotions, how to name them and how to regulate them.

What is Emotional Regulation?

Emotional regulation refers to a child’s ability to manage their own feelings, thoughts and behaviour. Emotional regulation forms part of a set of skills required to manage our own emotions and respond to other people’s. These are sometimes known as emotional competences or emotional intelligence. The skills include:

• understanding one’s own emotions and being able to communicate with others about how one feels
• understanding other people’s emotions and being able to identify and interact with others when one or both parties are emotional
• regulating one’s own emotions (including controlling, expressing and modulating emotion) in a culturally and situationally appropriate manner
• the ability to use emotion in one’s life in order to achieve one’s goals.

Why is it emotional regulation important?

Emotional regulation is essential to children's day to day life because it affects their understanding of situations, how they respond, their behaviour and their enjoyment of life. Supporting children to understand and manage emotions also provides them with skills that they will use in adulthood.

The  children have been learning about the ‘Zones of Regulation’. These zones help students recognise the different ways  they can feel throughout the day. Knowing the zones and having the language to describe each zone helps children to self regulate. Self regulation is being able to control emotions and the behaviours our emotions can cause.

The diagram below gives a snapshot explanation of the Zones of Regulation: