Anxiety Article and Zones of Regulation

Teaching Zones of Regulation: - Girls need to learn how to bring themselves out of the yellow zone (hyper, excited etc) back into green - Use of vocabulary to identify specific emotions is powerful - Globalisation of feelings as a class is leading to confusion e.g sad when actually feeling tired or worried - Links to UOI, How we express ourselves Anxiety article notes: - certain amount of stress and anxiety is normal and can be productive - negative emotions are 'bad' - lots of different emotions are being classed using 'extreme' language e.g. nervous-anxious, sad-depressed - need to teach good and bad stress - stress and anxiety are only harmful when they last/become chronic Ways to help: - empathy, acknowledging feeling and coaching them through it - What's the worst that could happen? - don't encourage avoidance - breathing - sleep - teach them how to make less effort This example shows evidence of a change to practice in order to achieve improved student outcomes. This example clearly shows improved student outcomes through recognising and teaching the importance of emotions in learning. Through the Zones of Regulation activities the girls have recognised that they are 'ready to learn' when in the green zone. Therefore when they are operating in the blue or yellow zones (the girls seldom operate in the Red Zone) they are not ready to learn and need to make an adjustment. The next steps in this learning is to develop strategies to recognise when you are entering the yellow or blue zone and how to bring yourself back into green.