Part 1: Analysis of Context

1. What do we know about our learners?

Holly Elementary is located in the Guildford area of Surrey. The 576 students enrolled at Holly come from a broad range of cultural, linguistic (56% of our students are English Language Learners), and educational backgrounds.  Holly students are enthusiastic and welcoming of new students—we have had 100 new students register this year (as well as 68 move out).

Our students have a variety of strengths:

·      They are actively involved in extra-curricular sports

·      They attend after school clubs (i.e. Jumpstart, ClubHouse 36, STARR)

·      They show their leadership skills by volunteering to be lunch/door monitors and through organizing spirit days

·      They participate in fundraisers and activities to promote social responsibility (i.e. Terry Fox run, Jump Rope for Heart)

·      They share their creative side (i.e. choir, dance team, Art Crawl, Spring concert)

And there are many other opportunities available to students:

·      Expressive arts and counselling support

·      Early literacy/numeracy support and late literacy support

·      An organized Learning Support program to support students in-class as well as through small group instruction in reading and math

·      A CARE program for our students who have recently immigrated

·      Breakfast and lunch programs

·      Monthly ‘Principal Meetings’ to celebrate student success (in regards to caring for ourselves, caring for others, caring for the school, and caring for our world)

Students have complex lives and histories and many struggle to get in the green zone when they are frustrated.   Though we know our students are resilient, we know that our students would benefit from having more self-regulation strategies.  Many students also lack the vocabulary to describe their emotions and feelings. 

2. What evidence supports what we know about our learners?

We know that our students are activity engaged in programs during school and after school through their attendance and the fact that we often have wait-lists for after school programming.  We see how happy they are to attend extra-curriculars, sports, art programs, etc.

We also know that students are in need of the extra supports offered at Holly because caseloads for child care workers and counsellors are high, our social development program is full and we have many students on the wait list for medical and psych-ed assessments. 

We know that our students would benefit from stronger self-regulation skills because we often observe our students jump from the green zone to the yellow or red zone quite quickly.  Students do not consistently display expected behavior on the playground and seem to lack strategies to utilize in place of unexpected behaviors. 

Part 2: Focus and Planning

3. What focus emerges as a question to pursue?

Main Question:

-To what extent would implementing Zones of Regulation language improve self-regulation and enhance student learning in our school?

Sub Questions:

-When you think of a time that students are in the green zone, what type of learning activities were going on?

-What are we doing when kids are in the green zone?

-How can we teach all the students self-regulation strategies and use a common language so that all students are aware of the tools they have to self-regulate?

-What can we do at assemblies to reinforce the self-regulation lessons going on in the classrooms?

4. What professional learning do we need?

We will introduce the Zones language at a school-wide assembly and then teach mini-lessons at primary/intermediate assemblies throughout the year.

We will purchase the Zones of Regulation books for all grade group teachers so that teachers have the lesson plans and materials to teach this method in their classrooms.  We will have committee meetings so that folks can share what is working in their classrooms and then we can share at staff meetings, etc.

We will form a committee of teachers who want to be involved to attend meetings, share successes and strategies, and identify students to be interviewed/observed for data collection.  Meetings will also address any other opportunities or concerns that arise.

5. What is our plan?

We have purchased the Zones of Regulation book for each grade group, plus additional copies for those that wanted their own book so that they could teach from it.

Part 3: Reflect, Adjust, Celebrate

6. How will we know our plan is making a difference? (evidence / success criteria)

We will observe several students in our school and collect evidence of their successes with this program. We will also do pre/post interviews with CCWs, SD, counsellors and classroom teachers. 

 

Update: At a staff meeting in early term 3 it was acknowledged by many staff that the students were indeed learning to use the Zones language and many noted improvement in regards to the students’ abilities to identify their feelings and which zone they were in.  Students are still working toward making sure they use the appropriate strategies to help them get back to the green zone when they are in red, yellow or blue.

7. Based on the evidence, does our inquiry require adjustment?

Update: Because of mini-lessons conducted at assemblies, lessons done in class, and bulletin board reminders (etc), all students at Holly now understand the language of Zones of Regulation.

Based on conversations and student reflections on think sheets (think sheets were designed using the Zones of Regulation in mind), we have evidence of students understanding the strategies that they ought to be using when in the red/yellow zone; however, students still struggle to use them in the moment.  There is a lot of “I should have…” and “Next time I will…”, but when in the heat of the moment students still struggle to use the tools in their toolbox to bring themselves out of the red/yellow/blue zone and into the green zone.

That being said there are many students who have become stronger at self-regulating and students are learning to ask for breaks when they need them.