Our students often come to school with emotional stressors that we cannot see. Learning can push some students to their limit and they frustrate quickly because learning is hard on top of navigating life's hardships. Helping our students relieve their stress, understand how to self-regulate and get back to their best selves is key to their academic success.
Gross and small motor activities, engaged in briefly, in addition to sensory activities that involve touch, taste, smell, vision, and hearing, can make an enormous and positive difference to the emotionally dysregulated child. Our "Motor Room" will be a break space for students who need to "re-set" and learn how to manage their feelings so they can learn to be successful students and eventually well-rounded, independent adults.
Students will enter the Motor Room and have 5-minute rotations on active gross motor activities, small motor activities, 5-senses experiences and then a goal-setting conversation with the Motor Room teacher. They will identify the Zones of Regulation feeling they entered the room with as well as the Zones of Regulation feeling they want to take into the remainder of the day, and work collaboratively with the adult to identify one way they can do that, given options (I can take a volcano breath, I can use a fidget, I can use the breathing ball, and so on). Over time, students will need the Motor Room less because they have internalized the skills and can apply them independently to a number of situations. It's a win-win on all levels!
About my class
Our students often come to school with emotional stressors that we cannot see. Learning can push some students to their limit and they frustrate quickly because learning is hard on top of navigating life's hardships. Helping our students relieve their stress, understand how to self-regulate and get back to their best selves is key to their academic success.
Gross and small motor activities, engaged in briefly, in addition to sensory activities that involve touch, taste, smell, vision, and hearing, can make an enormous and positive difference to the emotionally dysregulated child. Our "Motor Room" will be a break space for students who need to "re-set" and learn how to manage their feelings so they can learn to be successful students and eventually well-rounded, independent adults.
Students will enter the Motor Room and have 5-minute rotations on active gross motor activities, small motor activities, 5-senses experiences and then a goal-setting conversation with the Motor Room teacher. They will identify the Zones of Regulation feeling they entered the room with as well as the Zones of Regulation feeling they want to take into the remainder of the day, and work collaboratively with the adult to identify one way they can do that, given options (I can take a volcano breath, I can use a fidget, I can use the breathing ball, and so on). Over time, students will need the Motor Room less because they have internalized the skills and can apply them independently to a number of situations. It's a win-win on all levels!
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