Strategies to Support Dysregulated Students

 This week’s article summary is a recent post on Edutopia entitled Strategies to Help Dysregulated Students.

We spent considerable time during preplanning talking about classroom management, particularly how to respond to the child in your classroom who seems to act out more frequently or struggles to manage his/her emotions and behavior.

We emphasized the importance of “connection before correction.” Before we can effectively redirect a child’s behavior, we need to establish a trusting relationship with that child. That trust grows in time from the care and concern we show each student, as well as from the routines, expectations, and consistency we establish in our classrooms.

As I mentioned during preplanning, the good news is that most of our students — with some guidance and scaffolding — develop age-appropriate executive-function skills such as self-regulation, impulse control, and the ability to manage their emotions.

What I found particularly interesting about this article, published just a month ago, is how many of its recommendations are practices and strategies we have been using at Trinity for years: student-created classroom norms, Wheels of Emotions, designated time-out or calming areas, brain/body breaks.

There aren’t any magic spells or quick fixes for helping a child who is struggling with self-regulation. Instead, it comes down to our commitment to knowing our students well, building relationships with them over time, and providing the consistency, patience, and support they need—especially those students who require more of our attention and support than most.

Joe

----

Today, nearly 8 in 10 public schools report developmental delays among K-12 students: many students, educators say, are struggling with basic social and emotional skills such as listening, following directions, sharing, and taking turns than a mere five years ago. 

While many experts cite the pandemic's role in creating skill deficiencies, it's only a part of the story. Educators also point to major changes in the culture around child rearing, pointing to issues like rising screen time, less play, and fewer opportunities for face-to-face interaction. 

Serious behavioral issues and developmental concerns require broad support from administrators, specialists, and families. But for everyday moments that derail lessons—a child melting down, refusing directions, or struggling to rejoin the group—many teachers find that simple practices, consistently applied, can help turn big feelings into moments of growth instead of lost instructional time.

Expand Kids’ Emotional Vocabulary: Before kids can regulate their emotions, they need the words to describe them. Kids need to be explicitly taught that emotions aren’t good or bad but actually convey important information. A limited emotional vocabulary can make it harder for children to understand the signals their body is sending. Help kids learn the subtle differences between emotions by:

• Feeling Brainstorms: Challenge students to think of 3–5 words for simple emotions such as “happy” or “sad” to help them move beyond broad categories and build a more nuanced understanding of what they’re feeling.
• Emotion Anchor Charts: Create anchor charts illuminating various emotional states, adding new words and definitions as they come up in class discussions or read-alouds. For pre-readers, try to pair each word with an image, emoji, or student-friendly example to make sure they understand.
• Map Feelings Over Time: Once students have developed a healthy emotional vocabulary, use tools like emotion wheels and mood scales to help them become more aware of how their emotions fluctuate over time.

Create Agreements Students Own: To establish behavioral norms, co-create child-friendly community agreements at the start of the year. During discussion, students can generate simple norms like “we keep our hands to ourselves” or “we are nice to each other”; teachers can make the agreed-upon norms clearer through illustrations, drawings, or photos of children modeling each behavior. Role-playing with student actors or puppets can help explicitly show kids what these norms look like in real time, while praising the behavior when students practice it correctly can help make the expectation stick.

Create a Space for Calm: When young students become dysregulated, they often need time to calm their bodies before addressing what happened. When a child is overwhelmed, reasoning doesn’t work. First they need help settling their bodies. 

Calm-Down Corners: These provide a dedicated, comfortable space for students to reset. Encourage students to take five minutes and go to the space on their own when they need to engage in self-regulation. 

Let Books Do the Talking: Picture books can help kids explore emotions and abstract concepts like kindness, fairness, and respect—opening the door to meaningful conversations in ways that feel natural and familiar.

Use Brain Breaks: Well-timed brain breaks can stave off the fatigue, boredom, and distraction that often leads to dysregulation. Try a 3-5 minute break for students for every 15 minutes of concentrated academic work in elementary school. Some strategies: 

• Circles of Sameness: Students get up and take positions around the room as the teacher reads a statement. Those who agree move to the center; others stay put
• Laugh Like a…: Brainstorm animals, creatures, or characters, then cue students: “Drop everything and laugh like a ___.” Try a few in quick succession—monkey, whale, giraffe—to help students release tension and reset.
• Statue Freeze: Ask students to move around the room—walking, hopping, skipping, or tiptoeing—then call out a pose: “Be a statue of a lion!” Students freeze, then “un-freeze” and repeat.
• One-Minute Dance Party: Sometimes kids just need to move. For a quick, unstructured reset that works out pent-up energy, play a lively song and let students dance for one minute before returning to the lesson.

Teach Repair Rituals: When rules are inevitably broken, create a routine that helps students repair harm they may have caused. That might mean teaching young children how to offer a verbal apology, asking them to draw a picture of something the other child might like, or write a short note of contrition. The point is not to force an apology but to scaffold the process of reflection and responsibility. After a pushing incident, for example, a teacher might focus less on “Why did you do that?” and more on what happened, how the other child may have felt, and what the student can do to help—turning a difficult moment into a moment of learning and connection.

Build in Open-Ended Play: Even the days of our youngest students are highly structured, leaving less time for open-ended play and self-exploration. Integrating 10-minute outdoor breaks into instruction helps her students reset. The key is to give little directions beyond staying safe and taking a break.