Inclusion news

What's happening in the Inclusion corner?

This week’s focus has been Zones of Regulation, what they are and what they represent.

They come in different sizes, intensities, and levels of energy that are unique within our brains and bodies. To make them easier to talk about, we examined how The Zones of Regulation organises our feelings, states of alertness, and energy levels into four coloured Zones – Blue (sad/bored), Green (happy/calm), Yellow (silly/excited) and Red (mad/out of control).

The Zones of Regulation are a framework designed to help individuals, especially children, develop self-regulation skills and emotional control. In a school setting, children can become overwhelmed with certain structures of the day, like transitioning to a specialist class, friendship issues and learning expectations. The Zones of Regulation can help children identify key emotions and provide them with the emotional literacy to express and help regulate their feelings and emotions. It was developed by Leah Kuypers and is often used in educational and therapeutic settings. By matching colours to emotions it provides a common language for people, especially children to express and understand their emotions.

The framework also offers tools and strategies to help recognise and regulate emotions, leading to improved self-control, social interactions, and overall wellbeing.

We welcomed small groups of the preps into the Inclusion space this week and spent these first sessions getting to know each other. The students enjoyed completing an activity telling the group about themselves and we practised some bear breathing as a calming, restorative exercise.