Wellbeing Inclusion
Social/Emotional Strategies at BEPS
Zones of Regulation is a program used at BEPS that focusses on teaching young people to identify and respond to their own feelings, and also helps develop the ability to recognise different feelings in others which can help us to support our friends.
Feelings are grouped into different colour zones. Green Zone includes feelings like happy, focussed and calm. Yellow Zone includes feelings like being worried, frustrated or silly. Blue Zone includes feeling sad, bored, tired or sick, while the Red Zone includes the more heightened states, such as anger, elation, panic and feeling terrified.
None of the zones are inherently “bad” to be in, as all feelings are valid and can be useful in the right contexts, but we can practise and brainstorm different strategies that we can use when we are wanting to move out of a particular zone and back into one that supports what are trying to do at the time.
Being aware of how you are feeling and understanding why you feel that way can help us to regulate our emotions, especially when we find ourselves in a more heightened state that’s stopping us from going about our day.
Some creative Year 2 students, Fifi, Naomi and Zaaei, helped me to make some visuals for the Wellbeing Room Zones display this week to help others to get an idea for a strategy they can use if they are wanting to get back into the Green Zone.
Not everyone will find the same strategies helpful so it was important we came up with lots of great ideas!
Some of the strategies we came with that someone could use were:
- Playing with dolls or a toy you like
- Building with Lego or blocks
- Throwing a ball with someone or bouncing it
- Taking deep breaths
- Going for a walk
- Doing a grounding exercise - such as naming 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell and 1 thing you can taste.
- Doing some drawing or some colouring
- Reading a book
- Hugging a soft toy
- Having a rest
