Zones of Regulation: Teaching Self-Regulation Skills
Learn how Zones of Regulation helps UK teachers teach self-regulation skills through four colour-coded emotional zones and practical classroom strategies.
What is Zones of Regulation?
The Zones of Regulation is a popular framework and self-regulation curriculum. It teaches pupils how to manage their emotions and sensory needs. The programme works with children aged 4 and above.
According to Leah Kuypers (the creator of Zones of Regulation), everyone faces difficult situations that test their limits. If people can spot when they are becoming less regulated, they can do something about it. The main goal is to help people manage their feelings and get themselves to a healthy place.
Emotional learning tools have become more popular since the pandemic. Teachers now understand how important it is to address a child's primary needs. Self-regulation is often overlooked but it's a basic skill that children usually learn in early years through play.
The social thinking that develops in group activities was taken away from children's lives worldwide during lockdowns. This meant some children missed the chance to develop the right behaviours needed for school success. When children returned to school, some teachers reported children having trouble with impulse control.
Built on the cognitive behaviour approach, this popular framework uses four colours. These help people identify their current feeling based on their alertness, emotions and energy levels. It creates a coloured system to guide them to thinking strategies and resources that help with regulation. By learning how to spot triggers, read their bodies, consider their reactions, and think about social context, people learn how to better regulate their emotions. They become more skilled and self-aware problem solvers.
The Zones of Regulation activities are split into 18 lessons. Each lesson includes questions and instructions for learning activities to reinforce the regulation concepts being taught. Most lessons include extension activities and ways to change the activity to meet individual learner needs. Visual tools and printable activities are provided on a USB drive.
How to explain the Four Zones of Regulation?
Using a cognitive behaviour approach, the Zones of Regulation curriculum helps students identify when they are in a particular state called a 'zone.' Each of the four zones has a different colour. Feelings have different levels of energy and intensity. To make this concept simple, Leah Kuypers put human feelings into 4 easy, coloured categories called Zones of Regulation.
- Blue Zone: The Blue Zone shows low feelings and energy levels. This includes when someone feels bored, sick, tired, or sad.
- Green Zone: The Green Zone shows calmness and feeling in control. A person in the green zone may be content, focused, happy or ready for learning. Green is the zone for best learning.
- Yellow Zone: The Yellow Zone describes a person with higher energy levels and stronger emotions, but still in control. Someone might be feeling nervous, wiggly, silly, excited, anxious, frustrated or stressed in the Yellow zone.
- Red Zone: The Red Zone shows very strong emotions and high energy. A person is in the red zone when feeling angry, thrilled, terrified, out of control, devastated or enraged.
People go through all these zones naturally. The main focus of the Zones of Regulation framework is teaching people how to identify and manage their zones. This depends on their goals and what they need to do.
Who can teach Zones of Regulation?
Anyone willing to support people in building their regulation skills can teach The Zones of Regulation curriculum. This includes class teachers, caregivers, social workers, behaviourists, counsellors, psychologists, special education teachers, speech-language pathologists and occupational therapists.
A classroom teacher may help learners look at regulation strategies and tools. These include wellness activities, mental health support, mindfulness, movement-based activities, sensory-based tools, play-based learning, thinking strategies, and healthy relationships with others. Pupils work out which zone would be helped by each tool. They create a system to use tools to regulate a zone or move from one to another. Eventually, they develop their own personal toolbox to guide them in regulating their zones.
Using cognitive behaviour therapy ideas helps learners develop problem-solving skills, self-regulation skills, conversation skills, emotional learning, social skills and thinking functions. It also helps manage mental health and wellbeing, sensory needs, and conscious regulation of actions and feelings. Throughout the book, the user is called a 'teacher', but this doesn't mean one must be a classroom teacher to teach these lessons.
To help learners understand daily life regulation better, the lessons teach several skills. These include reading others' body language and facial expressions, understanding the situation, noticing changes in body language due to feelings, when and how to use regulation tools, and insight into situations that trigger their less regulated zones. They also learn to identify a wide range of emotions in others and themselves, plus the role of regulation in their personal goals, overall wellness and success in life.
The Zones of Regulation framework helps develop learners toward more independent regulation. It also respects and honours each individual. Social Thinking concepts are woven throughout the curriculum to help learners become skilled problem solvers. They build awareness of others' strong emotions, feelings and thoughts. They also identify the social context of an event. Both these factors help individuals regulate themselves over time.
Who benefits from the zones of regulation?
The main targets of the Zones of Regulation curriculum are students who struggle with self and emotional regulation. It was originally made to meet the needs of neurodiverse pupils. However, the curriculum lessons help a much larger group including adults and children of varying learning levels inside and outside school.
Anyone can have problems with self-regulation and emotional control. Since Zones of Regulation curriculum offers a common language, uniform visual teaching tool, and fair support for each learner, many regular education teachers have used it for their entire class. Many districts have adopted Zones of Regulation as a whole school approach.
Lessons are made to be used with people aged four (with average to above-average learning abilities) or above. Where needed, the lessons show ways to change Zones of Regulation activities for students of different abilities and age groups.
The level of understanding will vary. Teaching expectations depend on learners' abilities. Some changes are offered to adapt activities. Those with lower thinking abilities may not build deep understanding of the Zones framework. But through regular exposure, many people can find success in life by learning about their zones and using visual supports to guide them. This helps build social learning, self-regulation and emotional wellbeing.
Lessons may need different approaches to teach students with difficulties in regulation and thinking problems. This includes Autism Spectrum Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, anxiety disorders or defiant disorder.
Frequently Asked Questions about Zones of Regulation
Q1: What is the skill of regulation in the context of the zones of regulation?
The skill of regulation means being able to manage one's emotional and sensory needs to meet the demands of the environment and have better social interactions. In Zones of Regulation, students learn to identify their feelings and alertness levels, use strategies and tools to regulate their responses, and problem-solve positive solutions.
Q2: What are some strategies for regulation in the zones of regulation?
Strategies for regulation can include sensory supports, calming techniques, and thinking strategies. For example, a student might use a sensory tool like a stress ball to help manage their alertness levels, or they might use a thinking strategy like problem-solving or positive self-talk.
Q3: How can the zones of regulation be integrated into daily school life?
The Zones of Regulation can be built into daily school life in various ways. Teachers can include the zones in their classroom routines, use them to frame conversations about emotions and self-regulation, and embed them into academic lessons. The goal is to make the zones part of the school environment, helping students understand and manage their emotions throughout the day.
Q4: What is the role of alertness levels in the zones of regulation?
Alertness levels are a key part of Zones of Regulation. Students learn to identify their current level of alertness, understand how it impacts their emotions and behaviours, and use strategies to adjust their alertness to the best level for learning and interaction.
Q5: What are sensory tools in the context of the zones of regulation?
Sensory tools are resources that can help students manage their alertness levels and emotional responses. These might include physical items like stress balls or fidget toys, as well as strategies like deep breathing or movement breaks.
Q6: How does the zones of regulation approach support the development of prosocial skills?
Zones of Regulation helps students understand and manage their emotions, which is a complex skill that's vital for developing prosocial skills. By learning to identify their feelings, understand the impact on their behaviour, and use strategies to regulate their responses, students can improve their social interactions and relationships.
Zones of Regulation Resources in 2025
Zones of Regulation is a curriculum for self-regulation and emotional control.
Resource Options
- Book/curriculum: Core resource for implementation
- Training: Online and in-person options available
- Display materials: Posters and visual aids
The Four Zones
- Blue Zone: Low states (sad, tired, bored)
- Green Zone: Ready to learn (calm, focused)
- Yellow Zone: Heightened alertness (frustrated, excited)
- Red Zone: Extreme states (angry, terrified)
Related Resources
Key Papers related to Zones of Regulation
These papers highlight the broader context within which Zones of Regulation operate. They show the importance of teacher training, classroom management strategies, and interventions designed to improve self-regulation and thinking functions among students.
Whilst they do not directly mention the Zones of Regulation concept, they focus on related themes such as mindfulness, teacher effectiveness, self-regulation, and behaviour management in educational settings.
- Teaching Mindfulness to Teachers: A Systematic Review and Narrative Synthesis by Emerson et al. (2017) discusses mindfulness-based interventions for school teachers and their impact on stress, emotion regulation, and self-efficacy, suggesting that mindfulness could support teachers in managing classroom behaviour and emotions, which is related to the goals of Zones of Regulation.
- Teacher Self-Efficacy and Its Effects on Classroom Processes, Student Academic Adjustment, and Teacher Well-Being by Zee & Koomen (2016) examines the positive links between teacher self-efficacy and various classroom and student outcomes, indicating that teacher beliefs and attitudes significantly influence the learning environment, which aligns with the implementation principles of Zones of Regulation.
- Supporting self-regulated learning in computer-based learning environments: systematic review of effects of scaffolding in the domain of science education by Devolder, Braak, & Tondeur (2012) discusses scaffolding supports for self-regulated learning in computer-based environments, highlighting the importance of supporting students' ability to regulate their learning, a key component of the Zones of Regulation approach.
- Effects of the Good Behavior Game on Challenging Behaviors in School Settings by Flower et al. (2014) reviews the effectiveness of the Good Behavior Game, a strategy to positively change student behaviour, indicating that structured interventions can improve classroom behaviour management, which is a goal of applying Zones of Regulation.
- Strengthening Executive Function and Self-Regulation Through Teacher-Student Interaction in Preschool and Primary School Children: A Systematic Review by Sankalaite et al. (2021) examines the impact of teacher-student interaction on children's thinking functions and self-regulation, underscoring the importance of the educational environment in building self-regulatory skills, similar to the aims of Zones of Regulation.
