Self-Regulation: What Zone Are You In?
Feelings are just visitors, let them come and go ~ Mooji
It's been an active month around SSE! This month's counseling lessons focused on self-regulation. What better way to teach the children about self-awareness then to utilize The Zones of Regulation by Leah Kuypers. I am thankful for our PTA support in buying this amazing curriculum for the counseling department, such good resources! I incorporated a couple of activities which made it extra engaging for the students. First, I brought in a blank flip book. Here's a link to a free one at TPT by Buzzing with Knowledge <flip book template>.
As I explained how your body engine runs in each of the zones, the students colored that color on a flap of their flip book. An important,yet complicated message at all grade levels: All Zones can have EXPECTED and UNEXPECTED behaviors...lots of rich discussion around this. The student's final product looked something like this:
[insert photo of flip book]
I then went over strategies for helping our bodies get back into the green zone (which is the ready to learn zone). I used a couple of visuals that look a little like these:
(Pin by Sheequa Francis, Pinterest)
( Pinterest)
The image above was used for educator's reference and left in each teacher's classroom to support the children's learning of the concepts.
The students added strategies for each zone that was personal and helpful to them as we reviewed the different ones. The end result was their very own toolbox of strategies for regulating themselves when discovering they have slipped into an unexpected zone.
To finish off this activity, w took video clips from some of our favorite Disney and Pixar videos and used our tool boxes for voting to determine a character's zone. A special thanks to Kristina Kern who shared her Zones info with me!
Here is the Frozen clip I used (YouTube) to illustrate Olaf's green zone:
This is the Toy Story clip I used (YouTube) to illustrate Bullseye's Red zone:
I also used a clip from Inside out and Winnie the Pooh which added some variety and practice with the zones.
For any teachers out there wanting to extend any of these lessons, I found this website for Zones activities that looks promising: http://mrsduranteszones.weebly.com/the-zones-of-regulation.html
Now get out there and enjoy working in the Zones and increasing our student awareness around SELF-REGULATION!
