Research School Network: Emotional Regulation


Emotional Regulation

by Billesley Research School
on the

Wearing My Heart on my Sleeve

As I walked down the corridor a few weeks ago, a little voice peeped up from behind me, Hey! You’re that teacher that likes to talk about her emotions!” Suddenly, I was swarmed by a flock of Year 2 students reporting I’m in the green zone today Miss, I’m working so hard!” and It’s my birthday tomorrow so I’m in the yellow zone. I’m super excited!” I walked a little further and overheard a teacher telling the class, The screen isn’t working and I’m starting to get frustrated. I’m just going to breathe deeply while I try to figure this out.” It was quickly becoming clear that I’m not the only one who likes to talk about my emotions, but why is this so important at school?

The EEF’s Guidance Report on Improving Social and Emotional Learning in Primary Schools suggests that children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, should be taught strategies to enhance their self-awareness and self-management. The effect of this is not only improved mental health but also academic attainment. Teaching children emotions vocabulary, developing their ability to identify the physical cues of their feelings, and modeling the use of strategies to self-regulate will both improve the long term wellbeing of children who have experienced trauma while closing achievement gaps with their peers.

Last year at Billesley Primary, we undertook developing emotional literacy and self-regulation skills by adapting the Zones of Regulation program across Year 1. As the school’s mental health lead, I co-taught a series of lessons with class teachers that introduced a range of emotions vocabulary and categorised these feelings into four colour-coded zones” of alertness. The children develop both self-awareness and self-management skills by learning to recognise the physical signs of their feelings and practice employing tools to help them calm and move into optimal the green” zone.

In the weeks and months following, class teachers held quick check-ins with their classes throughout the day and reported that many children were better able to accurately express their feelings, understand what had caused them and independently choose strategies to calm themselves. As the children developed their ability to express their emotions, difficult issues such as homelessness, domestic violence and neglect often became the topic of conversation. While these lessons highlight the adverse childhood experiences of our learners, the SEL skills developed through them are proven to mitigate the long lasting impact of trauma on health and wellbeing, validating the importance of such approaches and pushing us to think about how we can best embed these practices within our environment and across the school.

Jones, S.M., Bailey, R., Brush, K., & Kahn, J. (2017). Kernels of practice for SEL: Low-cost, low-burden strategies. New York, NY: The Wallace Foundation.

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