Article: The Education Hub

How to support effective emotion regulation in schools and classrooms 

Effective emotion regulation is linked to a number of important life outcomes, including success at school. 

Research has demonstrated a link between higher levels of emotional regulation and academic performance, persistence with school tasks, improved attention, improved memory, increased motivation to learn, positive behaviours towards learning, positive social relationships, and improved mental health and wellbeing. Children and young people who can regulate emotions efficiently are not necessarily always happy (or never sad), but those with effective regulation can express a range of emotions for the purpose of accomplishing goals.

Emotional regulation crucial for Engagement

Emotional regulation is crucial for students' engagement in schools, as it enables them to manage their emotions effectively, allowing for better focus, participation, and resilience in learning. Here are some ways it plays a role and strategies to support it:

1. Reducing Stress and Anxiety

• Impact: High levels of stress and anxiety can lead to disengagement, as students may become overwhelmed and unable to concentrate.

• Strategies: Schools can teach relaxation techniques, like mindfulness or breathing exercises, to help students manage stress. Teachers can also structure classrooms in ways that reduce pressure, such as incorporating flexible deadlines or allowing movement breaks.

2. Fostering Positive Relationships

• Impact: Positive peer and teacher relationships create a supportive environment where students feel comfortable taking risks and engaging actively.

• Strategies: Implementing programs that encourage peer support, like buddy systems, and fostering teacher-student connections help students feel emotionally safe. Social-emotional learning (SEL) curriculums also build empathy and communication skills.

3. Building Self-Awareness and Self-Regulation Skills

• Impact: Self-regulation helps students control impulses, allowing them to stay on task and make positive choices, which directly improves engagement.

• Strategies: Explicitly teaching SEL skills helps students recognize and manage their emotions. Tools like “zones of regulation” can help students identify their emotional states and strategies to transition to a calm, focused state.

4. Promoting a Growth Mindset

• Impact: When students believe that challenges are part of learning and can be overcome, they are more likely to stay engaged even in difficult situations.

• Strategies: Teachers can encourage resilience by celebrating effort, not just achievement. Feedback should focus on process and improvement, reinforcing the idea that skills can grow with practice.

5. Providing a Structured, Predictable Environment

• Impact: Predictability reduces uncertainty, which can decrease anxiety and help students feel secure.

• Strategies: Establishing clear routines and consistent rules helps create an environment where students know what to expect. This stability allows them to better manage emotions and engage more fully in learning.

6. Incorporating Breaks and Physical Activity

• Impact: Physical activity and breaks give students a chance to reset emotionally and physically, which can improve focus and engagement when they return to tasks.

• Strategies: Including short breaks, movement exercises, or even a walk outside can help students regulate their emotions, release energy, and come back to tasks with better focus.

Integrating emotional regulation techniques into the school environment not only helps students engage more fully but also contributes to a positive, supportive atmosphere where learning and growth can thrive.

Term 3: Rethink, Reset and REGULATE

After the challenges faced in the pervious term, it was clear that before I could successfully embed my class program with an integrated approach, what stood on top alongside behaviour management, was that my identified learners needed additional support with emotional regulation. I had to rethink, reset and restart how to engage my learners by meeting their sensory needs first and foremost, as well as supporting them to be in a focused state. I started looking at my program through a fresh lens to pull back the 'academic' demands being placed on my student when they were in fact facing bouts of anxiety and struggling to regulate big emotions. 

I became more explicit about injecting the Zones of Regulation to check-in with where my students were at emotionally. 

Why Teach Self-Regulation?
Regulation is something everyone continually works on whether we are aware of it or not. We all encounter trying circumstances that can test our limits. If we can recognize when we are becoming less regulated, we are able to do something about it to manage our feelings and get ourselves to a healthy place. This comes more naturally for some, but for others it is a skill that needs more attention and practice. This is the goal of The Zones of Regulation​.

Sorting Our Emotions Into Four Zones
Feelings are complicated. 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, think about, and regulate, The Zones of Regulation organizes our feelings, states of alertness, and energy levels into four colored Zones – Blue, Green, Yellow, and Red. The simple, common language and visual structure of The Zones of Regulation helps make the complex skill of regulation more concrete for learners and those who support them. We learn to regulate our Zones to meet our goals and task demands, as well as support our overall well-being.

Term 2 Challenges

Over the course of Term 2,  I was faced with an increase in behaviour challenges with multiple students which started to overshadow the class program and the learning focus shifted more towards emotional regulation as well as tolerance training for unsettled students. This significantly impacted the intended delivery of my class program with an integrated curriculum approach. I was only able to successfully teach integrated lessons in sporadic bursts when the class was settled. This meant my data gathering was hindered. I was only able to capture student engagement from part way through the term onwards once escalating behaviour concerns were remedied.

Class Profile and Targeted Learners

• Specialist school

• Satellite class based at Howick Intermediate (host school).

• Age range: 11 - 14 years old

• 10 neurodiverse learners supported in their personal, social, emotional and educational growth through personalised learning programmes.

• A wide range of learning abilities with various medical neurodiverse diagnoses

• Mixed group of verbal and non-verbal students

• 6 learners using Augmentative and Alternative Communication systems

• 5 out of 10 learners with significantly low levels of engagement (Student R, Student B, Student M1, Student M2, Student Q).

After much deliberation, I decided I would focus my intervention efforts primarily on increasing the engagement levels in my 5 learners who consistently:

1. show disinterest/defiance to carry out assigned learning tasks
2. explicitly vocalise that they "do not care" or "you can't make me"
3. demonstrate wanting to be left alone through physically lashing out at others
4. unable to join in with group based learning and require 1:1 support
5. emotionally overwhelmed by the busy/unsettled dynamic of our class environment
6. choose to distance themselves away from the class e.g. - Student R: always sits at the back of the class - Student M1: refuses to be inside the classroom and spends all day outside - Student M2: lays on the floor; hides under tables; or run out of class to escape work demands - Student Q: confining himself into the corner of the class anytime learning demands are placed on him - Student B: high pitch screaming when overwhelmed
7. occasionally engage in carrying out activities of their own choosing only
8. push work away/or off table top or push the table away
9. will initiate a task but not complete an activity.

Monitoring

Planning how to monitor, record and refine my intervention. 

• What is the intended change for a learner?  

That my learner is focussed and participates willingly.

• How are they experiencing the intervention?
  Student Voice: Using the Zones of Regulation and AAC to check which emotional zone they are in before, during and after the task to ascertain their mood and
  
  

• How will they engage differently? How will you know?
  Present in the learning activity. Not escaping or running away. Joining in with others in the learning space.
  
  

• How will you know whether the intended ‘treatment’ was the same as the actual treatment?
  My learner will be learning literacy concepts i.e. poetry and keywords through dance movements

• How will their outcomes begin to shift? How will you know? Engagement and participation in activities for a longer duration of time and key concepts being grasped.

Setting Formal Checkpoints

“Formal checkpoints allow you to check systematically how learners are experiencing the intervention and whether it is beginning to have the impact on learner outcomes”

How do I plan to monitor the effectiveness of the intervention? It will be through student voice and looking at how they express themselves before, during and after our scheduled learning sessions (Literacy integrated with Dance sessions).

1. Before Literacy/dance session: using their communication system to signal “yes or no” for buy-in and participation.
   If student indicates “Yes” = it expresses they will join the session.
   If student indicates “No” = it expresses they are not interested in session.
   Monitoring: Checking for frequency of their answer between "Yes" vs "No"
   
   

2. During the Literacy/dance session: using their communication system to check for continuation of participation.
   If student indicates “More” = it expresses they want to continue with the session.
   If student indicates “Finish” = it expresses they are not interested in the session any longer.
   Monitoring: Check for the duration of time the student is actively engaged.

3. After the Literacy/dance session: using their communication system to check for enjoyment and emotion after the session is finished. If student indicates “Happy” = it expresses they enjoyed the session. If student indicates “Sad/Angry” = it expresses they did not enjoy the session. Monitoring: Checking for frequency of their answer between Happy vs [negative emotion]

Formulating an Hypothesis (Hunch)

A whirlwind of thoughts and wonderings:

• If I gain my students' interest areas first, then I can plan my term topics to get them engaged.
• If I integrate curriculum areas that are more connected with my students’ interests than they are more likely to engage in learning.
• If I introduce elements of music, dance, drama and movement into my literacy lessons, I will be able to entice my learners attention.
• If I merge Literacy with different components from the Arts and Science curriculum areas it will make the activities more enticing for my students.
• I will need to find and explicitly inject activities that will capture and hold their attention to support their ability to stay focused.
  
• Potentially it’s around needing to plan more cleverly. Get to now what inspires them and link/connect what I have to teach them within those curriculum areas.

Design for learning from the students interest areas

Understanding the learners interests before planning their needs. Currently, I have lots of student challenges around engaging and learning.

Focusing on the process not the product

Students learn by doing, being engaged, making mistakes, thinking, problem solving and having the space and support to take risks. Therefore, during learning activities staff support students to focus on what they are doing in the moment, not what the end result looks like.

Creating irresistable invitations to learn

Students only learn when they are engaged. In order to engage our students, we need to gain and hold their attention. We do this by making ourselves irresistible, presenting activities that are just too amazing to ignore. Once we have student’s attention we can add in the learning.

The hunch to pursue: “If I integrate different components from The Arts and Science curriculum areas to supplement teaching keywords and concepts for Literacy content, it will make the activities much more enticing for my students, who will then be more interested to engage.”

Team Planning with an Integrated Approach

In one of my previous blogs, I had contemplated potential ways forward for teachers at Sommerville by suggesting deliberate use of our termly "Team Release" days to plan collaboratively within our pathway team. 

This was a successful session alongside my colleagues where we approached our Term Topic: Wind with an interdisciplinary lens. We started off the session by first asking ourselves the big question "What key concepts do we want our students to know and do across the main curriculum areas for Numeracy, Literacy and Science?" By identifying how the element 'Wind' would align within each discipline, had us looking at targeted areas that we can interconnect:

- Literacy: Poetry, Drama and Dance - Using poetry features alongside body/gesture to mimic wind conditions, patterns and movement. 

- Science: Wind related experiments using observation and hypothesizing.

- Technology: Technological Product - Understand that technological products are made from materials that have performance properties.

- Maths Strand: Geometry - exploring 2D and 3D shapes (also connected to Visual Arts in creating artwork)

- Visual Arts: Represent the movement of wind in an artwork.

Team planning in motion:

Connecting multiple subject areas

Planning with an integrated approach is explicitly discussed in the article Integrated Curriculum: Increasing relevance while maintaining accountability by Dr. Susan M. Drake & Joanne Reid - Brock University, Ontario (2010) who state that:

"Integrated curriculum teaches core concepts and skills by connecting multiple subject areas to a unifying theme or issue". 

(S. M. Drake & J. R. Brock 2010)

They expand on this by emphasising that "planning for an integrated approach is a collaborative venture" and highlight explicit steps in designing an integrated curriculum within their Ontario case study.

1. Determine what learning is most important by scanning the relevant curriculum areas for recurring ideas. Vertically scan subject areas’ expectations, two grades below and one above the target grade. Horizontally scan expectations across subjects of the target grade. The similarities represent what is most important for students to know (core concepts or Big Ideas such as systems and structures, sustainability and interdependence), do (21st century skills such as research and critical thinking) and be (ethical issues in the context of self and community). Cluster expectations into meaningful chunks that describe the conceptual content (Know), skills (Do) and attitudes/beliefs (Be), the KDB.

2. Choose an appropriate issue or theme to study.

3. Brainstorm possible activities based on expectations. Create a concept web as an organizing graphic.

4. Finalize the KDB to act as an umbrella for the unit.

5. Create a rich assessment task for a culminating activity. Align this task with the KDB and curriculum expectations. A challenging but relevant assessment task – one that involves more than one subject and allows students to demonstrate that they have met expectations and achieved the KDB – is key to creating a meaningful curriculum.

6. Create two to three Big Questions. Organize daily instruction around them.

The article further indicated that:

● Core cross-disciplinary concepts and higher-order skills are taught by connecting multiple subjects to a unifying theme or issue.

● Students in integrated programs demonstrate academic performance equal to, or better than, students in discipline-based programs.

● Benefits include greater student engagement, increased teacher collaboration and professional growth and more opportunities to differentiate learning, all especially helpful for at-risk students.

● Creating integrated curriculum is not without challenges, often requiring a fundamental change in practice and beliefs.

Intervention Implementation

 > > Hunch:  “If I merge different components from The Arts and Science curriculum to supplement teaching Literacy/Numeracy concepts, it will make the activities much more enticing for my students, who will then be more interested to engage.” < <

Identified target learners (who demonstrate low levels of engagement):

• Student R

• Student Q

• Student M1

• Student M2

Term 2 Implementation:
I deliberately planned to deliver Literacy with Drama and Science with Visual Arts to pique the interest of of my low engagement students.

Intervention #1: Integration of Science and Visual Arts
By teaching Science (Topic: Fire) alongside Visual Arts to create artwork projects which explicitly teach the language of melting, boiling, heating, burning while using them as techniques to create a fire effect.

Intervention #2: Integration of Drama with Script Writing (Literacy)

The idea was to weave Drama and Literacy: Script Writing together to explore the story “Maui and the Goddess of Fire”. The focus was to bring this Maori myth/legend alive through drama features while building comprehension of the text (setting, character descriptions and emotive language). 

DRAMA:

• Expressions: To use facial expressions to demonstrate emotions; transition from one expression to another. 

• Body/Gesture: To use different bodily movements
  i.e. different heights and shapes; control my movements while travelling through the acting space.

• Tone/Voice: To use voice techniques in different ways to convey various expressions

SCRIPT WRITING:

• To use a range of descriptive vocabulary (wow/emotive/senses) to describe the setting and characters through exploration of the 5 senses: Smell, Touch, Taste, Sight, Sound

• To know features of a script (eg name; speech; narrator, action) and differentiate between narrator and characters.

Unpacking Integrated Curriculum

Delivering an integrated curriculum to boost student engagement in a specialist setting 

Earlier this term, I presented my COL inquiry to our colleagues at Sommerville about exploring what integrated curriculum looks like in our specialist setting and the creative ways we can get our neuro-diverse tamariki engaged in learning.

My aim was:

a) To unpack what delivering an integrated curriculum means....

"Integrated curriculum involves the purposeful combination of two or more subjects for cross-disciplinary curriculum coverage".

b) more importantly, to uncover "WHY?" ....to boost student engagement!

Studies on delivering an integrated curriculum have reported:

• Enhanced levels of motivation for both student and teachers.

• Improved class attendance.

• Reduction of discipline problems.

• Less competition and more co-operation in group projects.

• Students more involved and excited.

Integration in Action

Recently, I was fortunate to visit one of our Sommerville satellite classes based at Sylvia Park School to witness an integrated Math and Literacy lesson. The students were being taught the concept of time by reading The Hungry Caterpillar while making connections to the days of the week within the story. 

Upon entering the classroom, there was a familiar hum of activity as the students were transitioning to their seats ready for the learning block to commence. What struck me at first glance was the purposeful seating arrangement of the students around a U-shaped table in front of a smartboard with the classroom teacher (CT) positioned at the heart of the learning station. It was evident this CT had pre-planned and intentionally set up resources for this integrated session. It was well-organised and equipped with a plethora of learning tools e.g. AAC systems laid out for each child, large print visuals to supplement the story, Numicon set on display and learning assistants strategically seated alongside a couple of students requiring more adult support. It was clear that differentiated resources were prepared well in advance to ensure each child would access the session at their level. Also, it's important to note that this CT had ensure to conduct a pre-chat with the learning assistants to outline the type of support required in the upcoming session. Clearly, a well oiled team who understands their learners well. 

This immediately signaled the importance classroom organisation plays to ensure a successful learning block, and how pivotal its is to scaffold learners with appropriate tools to access as well as comprehend what is being taught. 

Throughout the session, the learning environment was abuzz with chatter, each learner supported at their level to meet their individualised learning goal i.e. point to the correct day of the week and the food item eaten (on the fringe vocabulary of the coreboard) to identify what the caterpillar ate on that given day. The concept of time was reinforced with core words to build comprehension of the story e.g. "big" "eat" "more" "next" "when" to indicate the caterpillar getting bigger and fatter the more it ate. Some learners where identifying words on their high tech devices where others were learning to correctly use NZSL sign for the days of the week and accompanying core words. 

Seeing every student engaged in their learning was delightful, albeit in their own ways.

Types of engagement I observed throughout the session:

• Feedback from staff was given to celebrate when students were successful in i.e. high five; verbal praise of "well done" or "that's correct"

• Constant praise on readiness for learning i.e. good sitting/looking.

• Students copying modelled NZSL signing of words.

• Allocation of sensory movement breaks so that one child had freedom to move and then return to the table to continue learning.

• One student was seated and bouncing on the physio ball while learning and getting the movement they needed to stay focused.

• Assigned staff well aware of their designated learners needs and provided scaffolded AAC support.

• PB4L tokens distributed for learners ability to follow routines pre, during and post session.

• Calm and enthusiastic staff who could redirect students where/when required.

• Other activities running in the classroom TAs celebrated learners in their different groups.

Photos of the session

Confidence Levels of Colleagues in Sommerville School

What the survey data showed:

Out of the 17 responses gained, it was really interesting to see how colleagues rated their confidence level to deliver their classroom program using an integrated approach.
(Scale: 1 = not confident and 10 = very confident) 

• 7 out of 17 ( 41.2%) staff members rated themselves at 8 or higher. (Highly confident)
• 8 out of 17 ( 47.2%) staff members rated themselves between 5 - 7. (Middle level confidence)
• 2 out of 17 ( 11.8%) staff members rated themselves below 5. (Low confidence)

It appears the confidence levels are high in the majority of our cohort, but I was intrigued to also delve deeper into the challenges faced by teachers to deliver their classroom program with an integrated approach. The findings [pie chart below] suggested that the main barriers colleagues faced was a) Time to collaborate and b) lack of resource availability. 

This had me wondering...what are some actionable steps that can be taken to overcome these barriers when a) teachers are feeling time constraints to connect with each other to plan collaboratively and b) limited curriculum resources available for their utilisation? Sommerville has a wonderful wealth of expertise that exists across the school network, so how can we intentionally connect these teachers as valuable resources themselves to plan using an integrated curriculum approach.

My wonderings for potential ways forward:
- Deliberately using termly "Team Release" days to plan collaboratively in our pathway teams.
- Using release days to visit expert teachers across the wider school network who have a strong expertise in a specific area of the curriculum, so that we take advantage of these expertise within our school.
- Connecting with our Curriculum Leaders to explore how their different areas can be taught in a way that allows planning to be merged effectively for our student outcomes.
- Reaching out to other Specialist school in Auckland and across NZ to see how they deliver the curriculum in their school settings.