The benefits of regulating your classroom 

By Kate Walton; Co-founder of Same Page Co.

5 minute read

All teachers have felt it. The dreaded aftermath of a wild recess or lunch and the return back to class. The kids are heightened and you’ve got a job to do. That job isn’t jumping into your well considered and planned lesson. Your job is to regulate your students and prime them for learning. 

As adults, we have hopefully reached a point where we can safely and easily regulate our emotions as needed. We’ve all had a car pull out in front of us, had an immediate emotional response of frustration and rage but due to our long practised skill set around emotional regulation, we have returned ourselves promptly to a state of calm and moved on. Our response to situations that throw us for a loop like this are largely dependent on how well we have learnt to cope and emotionally regulate.

Children have a day filled with situations that throw off their state of equilibrium. They drop their food on the ground, a friend won’t play with them, a parent says no, they can’t pull off their jumper. The distinguishing difference between children and adults is that they are not yet able to take control of their emotions. This is a learnt skill and one which takes years to develop. 

A recognition of this, most certainly in early years education, is changing the way we support and educate children around their feelings, working with them and teaching them how they can find strength in building their own set of self-regulation skills. Being able to build on your own self-regulation allows you to have more control over their choices and to help them to make them in a more considered and mindful way. 

We learn when we are ready

Being able to keep your calm and return to a balanced state obviously has its benefits for our mental health and happiness. It would surely result in us spending less time in states of frustration, sadness, anger, worry and more time in a state of calm and content. 

Aside from improved wellbeing and happiness, the impact of self-regulation on our ability to learn is probably one of the most exciting elements, particularly for our classrooms and for teachers. When we don’t have a brain that is firing with over-excitement from a busy lunch, or a head filled with worry about a fight with a friend and we have given those feelings the time and attention they need, then we have a brain that is in a place to be receptive to its current moment and environment. 

Teachers will quickly deplete their own levels of regulation when they try to ‘fight’ to teach a class of students who are dysregulated and not ready to listen and learn. Ever felt like you’ve said “ok everyone, it's time to stop chatting and tune in” more times than you should? Think back again to that wild aftermath of children returning from a busy recess or lunch break. Each of those students walks back into class holding onto their own unique mindset based on the experiences of the last half hour or so. The responsibility of our educators (and parents) is to show them how to come back to a more centred state. 

Why chill out time isn’t a waste of time

So, there is incredible power in teachers valuing the time needed to regulate their classroom as a whole. We need our students to learn and in order to learn they need to be ready. What we know is that if a student is heightened, they cannot listen, and when they cannot listen there is no learning taking place. 

Take the first 5 minutes of a lesson to ‘tune in’ with your class. Where are they at? How are they feeling? How can I help them? Do this and you might just find yourself taking 5 minutes and feeling like you add a bonus of 15 minutes through well focused and responsive work from your students. The 5 minutes might look like…

• A practice of mindfulness. Use the free resource smilingmind.com and see your students physically and mentally ‘slow’ themselves down.
• Calm colouring. There are many free printable resources available online to print and colour, include some calming music for added cool down effects.
•  Teach your students how to pay attention to breath and slow the mind. A fun and easy one for kids is ‘star breathing’ - hold up your left hand, and with your pointer finger on the right trace up your left thumb for about 4 seconds, pause at the tip and then trace down and breathe out for 4 breaths. Keep tracing and move up the right pointer for an in breath of 4 seconds and out as you trace down the other side. Repeat this all the way to the end of your hand and back again. 
• Silent reading. An old faithful but a great one to allow children to still themselves after being out at a busy recess or lunch and includes the added whimsy of escape to the magic of the story and characters of the book. 
• Check in chats. Get the majority of your class settled on a 5 MINUTE MINDFULNESS task and then check in with the few students you can spot who really need your time and guidance and regulate with

Not sure if you always need to take the 5 minutes?? Think you don’t need it? Or is the mathematics lesson top priority? Ask yourself these questions the next time you are expecting a child to tune in listen, and respond to something you ask of them: 

1.  Read the room. Is the child/children calm and ready? Does it look like they are ready to take in new information and follow through on any requests? Have you just interrupted their exciting game for your own request - well of course they aren’t attuned to you! 

2.  Is the request age appropriate. Are you asking too much of the child/children? Or too little? Simple 1-2 steps are often the most early learners can load themselves with. Or is the request simply uninspiring or not motivating enough? 

Allow regulation time. It takes time to find the calm. And we have to remember that this is a learned skill. Set the child/children up for success - “In 5 minutes we will have to finish this activity and move on, and that's ok, we will do it all together as a team”