Have you heard of the "Zones of Regulation?"
This is something I have often heard of and utilized with my students in special education. Over the past year, I have worked to learn more, educate myself and others, and find ways to teach more students about the "zones" because I feel they are important for everyone to know about!
This summer I had the opportunity to attend a class by my friend, Jen Olson. She is so knowledgeable on Zones and I respect her as a colleague and teacher. I learned so much from her in a short 2 hour class at Summer Academy and am excited to share with you how I plan to implement things in my classroom this coming school year!
To start things off, I am SUPER EXCITED to share with my students this awesome Zones of Regulation poster I created! I loved the idea of using the characters in the movie "Inside Out" to help students relate to their feelings. I ordered the stuffed animal characters from Amazon so the students can hold them, play with them, and talk to them!
My idea with the poster is we can use it as a whole class reference, as well as use it to identify our feelings and find tools to fill our "tool boxes" in times of need! I tried to add a few ideas for tools to each of the 4 zones.
As I introduce these to the class, I am planning to use the Inside Out videos to identify feelings. As the week progresses, I then plan to use some of these videos to see if students can identify the zones in other characters:
RED Zone
YELLOW Zone
GREEN Zone
*Yellow if you focus on Dad*
*Blue at start, then turns Green*
BLUE Zone
These Popsicle sticks that are colored with the zones will serve a couple purposes. Each child will receive one to keep in their bin. They will also receive a clothespin with their name on it. As we are introducing the zones and learning more about them, students will use these sticks to identify the zone a character is in on the movie clip I show. This activity will be to help students start to identify what it looks, feels, and sounds like to be in a particular zone. I will use the sticks as we read aloud a variety of books like the ones by Julia Cook. My favorite for introducing the Red Zone is "Soda Pop Head." Once students have mastered the concept of Zones, I will ask them to check-in each school day by showing me where they are on their zones stick. Throughout the day, if this changes, they can check in with me again and we can talk or use a tool in our "tool box" to help return to the green zone.
For my next little adventure, I went to Home Depot and picked up some paint color samples. I hole punched them in the upper left corner and made "zones toolboxes" for each of my students. As we learn about each of the zones, students will get to create their own toolbox with 2-3 tools to help them return to the green zone. Take a peek at my examples:
I know that students will have a little more trouble writing on the cards, so my goal is for them to each write 2 examples of how they would feel/act in that zone and 2-3 tools for each zone. Then students can turn them over and draw a picture of what they would look like in each zone.
There are so many amazing resources on the web for Zones of Regulation. However, I encourage you to check out the official website HERE!
Do you use Zones of Regulation in your classroom?
Have you seen it benefit all students?
What fun ideas have you used that work with your students?
I love when you share - together, we are better!
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