Strategies to Help Students
Welcome to the OT Cutler School Parent Blog. This year’s blog will focus on
self-regulation.
Does
your child know the four different Zones?
The Cutler School has embraced teaching kindergarten through
grade five classrooms The Zones of Regulation Curriculum. This program
teaches the students the life skill of identifying and managing their emotions
and tools that they can use to help them deal with their feelings in more
appropriate ways to match the circumstances.
The feelings are categorized into four zones. None of the zones are good or bad. You can be in more than one zone in a day and
that is okay.
In the blue
zone your body is running slow.
You can be sad, sick, hurt, bored, or shy.
In the green
zone you are ready to participate.
Some feelings in the green zone include happy, focused, okay, thankful,
good, or proud.
You are starting to lose control in the yellow zone, but
generally can get it back. In this zone
you may feel distracted, silly, fidgety, frustrated, anxious, or worried.
When you are in the red zone you are out of control.
Your brain and your body are not talking to each other. It is hard to
make decisions. Usually when you are in
the red zone you need to take a break.
In the red zone you can be angry, mean, yelling, shouting, or
physical.
The author Leah Kuypers noted, “The Zone curriculum provides
strategies to teach students to become more aware of, and independent in,
controlling their emotions and impulses, managing their sensory needs, and
improving their ability to solve conflicts.” The Zones program can be utilized at home and
in school.
Please check out the Zones of Regulation program
to get an overview of the book.
Our next blog in November will start to focus on Zone Tools
(strategies) that can be used at home and school.
