…from theory to practice
First let me start of by saying in the education program at UBC we are required to do an inquiry project on pretty much any subject that interests us in the realm of education. This project extends over the course of many months and has you really explore in depth the content you are researching. My inquiry project was on self-regulation in the primary grades. I am incredibly interested in how we can teach children to identify their own arousal states and be able to regulate their arousal states independently. Self-regulation has a multitude of benefits for individual students and their success in the classroom while also being helpful for the teacher in terms of classroom management. The more I explored the current research on self-regulation and the current programs and strategies that are available within the classroom the more I wanted to implement it within my practicum. Lucky for me my school advisor was extremely receptive to this idea.
-When deciding on how I would teach self-regulation I thought a lot of my inquiry project. Although I have implemented ideas from Fun Friends and the MindUp Program throughout the morning meetings I found the Alert Program’s concept of ‘checking your engine’ to be such a kid-friendly analogy to use for understanding your own arousal states. With the analogy of checking your engine students learn that their are three zones they can be in. The blue zone is when their engine is cold and they are feeling sleepy, sick, or disengaged. On the opposite end the red zone is when their engine is running too hot and a child has too much energy and cannot sit still. Both are arousal states that are not optimal for their best learning. The green zone is when their engine is just right the child is calm and ready to learn. This is the zone we try our best to be in when we are at school. As class we discussed these states a lot over the ten weeks while also discussing strategies to get into the green zone when they are in the blue or red zone. I was unsure how the students would feel about this analogy but I was pleasantly surprised how quickly they picked up the terminology and were using the zones to articulate their own arousal states.
A fantastic resource for teaching children how to self-regulate.
Our class ‘check your engine’
Check your engine! The student’s letting me know how their engine’s were running at that point in the day!