Self-regulation is the ability to manage your emotions, thoughts, and behaviours to suit different situations. For primary school pupils, this skill is still developing and often requires co-regulation – where an adult provides support to help the child regain calm. Effective self-regulation helps children focus on learning, build stronger friendships, and handle daily stressors like frustration or tiredness.
Teaching self-regulation to primary pupils is basically helping them learn how to hit the pause button when they’re feeling overwhelmed or frustrated. Think of it like teaching them to drive their own ’emotional car’, they need to know when to accelerate and when to apply the brakes.
This staff meeting starter provides an opportunity for staff to consider how frequently and how effectively they directly teach self-regulation strategies and how confident they are at supporting pupils through co-regulation.
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Self-regulation is closly linked with executive function. Premium subscribers can watch our mini-training module about executive function where we explain what executive function is, why it is important to educators, and how to develop pupils’ executive function through a range of strategies.
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