Supporting Emotional Awareness

We are big fans of The Zones of Regulation® by Leah Kuypers and have used her curriculum for the last several years.  We constantly find ourselves modifying the curriculum to meet the needs of the students in each of our groups.

Right now, I am introducing the Zones of Regulation® to the students in our school's Setting III ASD Program, and while the concept is fantastic, the activities do not hold their attention for this particular group of students.   So, I used two great books to introduce the zones, Today I Feel Silly and Other Moods That make My Day by Jamie Lee Curtis and The Way I Feel by Janan Cain.

I gave each student colored popsicle sticks (the fabulous multi-purposeful and multi-colored ones from Michaels!) that correspond with the Zones.  It seemed to work great for all of five minutes until they realized that "cheating" (i.e. looking at others' sticks) was super easy!  (Egg on my face…how did I not see that coming?)  So I created these visual supports for them.  I told the students that there were more feelings in each Zone than what was shown, and that it was okay to share them.

We used the one on the left yesterday during our group, and it was a huge success!  The students were able to use them independently when paired with the Pixar: Monsters, Inc. Mike's New Car which can be found at the bottom of this post.    The video was a perfect fit for this activity.  I left several of these visual supports in the classroom for the students to use when they are having a difficult time sharing how they are feeling, especially when they are upset.  It will allow for them to begin to generalize this tool into other social situations. 

Both supports are easy to assemble.   Simply print, laminate, and cut out the parts.  The visual support pictured above and on the left requires you to punch a hole at the top and the bottom, add a pony bead to the piece of string, place the string through the two holes, and tie in the back.  Voila!  The visual support pictured on the right is even easier to assemble.  Join the color wheel and feelings wheel together using a brad (i.e. fasteners).  (FYI...I was razzed by my colleagues when I went looking for brads.  Apparently I dated myself in asking for one, so be careful what you ask for!)

We use these supports with our social skills groups to improve their own emotional awareness and to identify feelings in others.  They have been especially helpful when students become upset and cannot express how they are feeling.  We have also shared them with the OTs, DCD teacher, EBD teachers and school counselor in our building. Aside from social skills instruction, they can also be placed in "take a break" areas, used to improve expressive language, and when talking about character traits.  If you'd like to check them out, you can find them here at our TpT store.

As promised, here is the video that I used.The students love, love, love short cartoon films (and yes, this will be a future blog post!).  I hit the jackpot with this one!

The Zones of Regulation® curriculum (Kuypers 2011) is published by Think Social Publishing, Inc. and is available for purchase here.