Emma Shackleton: 0:44

Working with students who frequently get dysregulated in school, lose control of their emotions, or find it hard to use agreed strategies in the real world, this is a growing issue in schools. And that's why in this week's School Behaviour Secrets, we're going to take you through the secrets of writing a successful pupil regulation plan step by step.

Simon Currigan: 1:07

Welcome to the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. I'm your host, Simon Currigan. My co host is Emma Shackleton, and we're obsessed with helping teachers, school leaders, parents, and, of course, students when room behaviour gets in the way of success. We're gonna share the tried and tested secrets to classroom management, behavioural special needs, whole school strategy, and more, all with the aim of helping your students reach their true potential. Plus, we'll be letting you eavesdrop on our conversations with thought leaders from around the world, so you'll get to hear the latest evidence based strategies before anyone else. This is the School Behaviour Secrets Podcast. Hi there. Welcome to episode 225 of School Behaviour Secrets. And if you're new to the show, don't worry. The shame burns. Yes. But you'll only feel it the first time. I'm joined today by my co host, Emma Shackleton, who I'm sure has nothing to feel shameful about at all. Hi, Emma. Hi, Simon. I've got a quick question to ask you. Don't worry, but I just wanted to share something.

Emma Shackleton: 2:11

Go on. Is this our news?

Simon Currigan: 2:12

Yes. It's our news. We've got some exciting news about the podcast and how we share our resources and strategies and ideas with you. So there's gonna be some changes coming, and we'll share what those are at the end of today's episode.

Emma Shackleton: 2:28

Yep. After 3 and a bit years and over 200 episodes, some big changes are on the way. But full details on that later.

Simon Currigan: 2:36

Quick question.

Emma Shackleton: 2:37

Go on then.

Simon Currigan: 2:38

According to a 2016 survey, drivers in cities across the UK, including Birmingham, Cardiff, Bristol, Edinburgh, and Glasgow were asked how often do they feel angry while driving? What percentage do you think replied often?

Emma Shackleton: 2:57

Well, having recently driven through Central London for the first time ever, I saw firsthand quite a few angry drivers. And, of course, Simon and I travel to and from schools in and around Birmingham City Centre all of the time, so I'm gonna go quite high with this one. I think drivers in cities feel angry around 30% of the time, like 1 in 3 journeys, if that makes sense. What did the survey say?

Simon Currigan: 3:27

Country mile away on this 1, only, not 30%, 3% of drivers said they felt angry often when driving. And where we live, Birmingham, that was the worst, 4%, but I guess that's the M6 effect. 18% on average said they sometimes felt angry. 1% said they didn't know, which raises some questions of its own. And the figures for feeling anxious, interestingly, were almost identical to the figures for how often people felt angry.

Emma Shackleton: 4:00

Oh, that is interesting. I would have expected the anxiety figures to be higher. Maybe people just don't want to admit that they feel angry. Maybe there's a little bit of shame involved there. Anyway, what's the link with today's episode, Simon?

Simon Currigan: 4:14

So we're going to explain step by step how to write a proactive pupil regulation plan whose purpose is to keep your students calm and regulated in the classroom.

Emma Shackleton: 4:26

Oh, I know a lot of people are gonna find this really useful.

Simon Currigan: 4:30

Yeah. And we're holding nothing back today. We're literally going to walk you through what a regulation plan is, the science of why it works, and how to implement it with your pupils.

Emma Shackleton: 4:42

But before we do that, I've got a quick request to make of our listeners. After this episode, we're taking a break for the summer. So if you haven't subscribed yet, now is definitely the time to do it so that when we return after the break, your podcast app will automatically pick up new episodes in September so you don't miss out on episodes or lose track or forget about us entirely.

Simon Currigan: 5:07

They wouldn't do that, would they?

Emma Shackleton: 5:09

Oh, it's a danger. It's a danger. So don't let us drop off your radar. All you've got to do is hit the subscribe or follow button, and it's panic aborted.

Simon Currigan: 5:19

We've also got a good download that kind of fits nicely alongside this episode. It's called how to help children manage anger and other strong emotions that you might be interested in.

Emma Shackleton: 5:29

Because when we think about kids getting heightened, often we immediately think about anger or anxiety. But, actually, there's a huge range of emotions that can affect our pupils.

Simon Currigan: 5:40

This guide gives you an approach to helping your students understand, recognise, and manage those strong emotions successfully, whatever they are, which will obviously be a key part of your regulation plan. Everything's explained step by step, and your download even comes with some printables which you can download and print out to support your work.

Emma Shackleton: 6:01

To get your free copy now, I'll put a link in the episode description. All you've got to do is open up your podcast app, check the description, and tap directly through to our website. Enter your email address, and we'll ping over your copy directly to your inbox.

Simon Currigan: 6:18

That said, it's time to roll up your sleeve, pick up your tea, extend your hand, and dunk the delicious jammy dodger we call behaviour. Great structural integrity on a jammy dodger. Don't get me started on the structural integrity of biscuits or we'll be here all day. Right. So I wanna talk about before we get going, the purpose of a pupil regulation plan is and the approach we're taking with this. And the approach we're taking is proactive as opposed to reactive. So when you look at traditional IEPs and behaviour support plans and things like that, it very much focuses on behaviors or, say, an anger management program focuses on what you should do when you're already angry. So it teaches you things like coping skills and self control and ways of managing that, or it might, you know, work on specific gaps on social and emotional knowledge. So it's all about what to do once you're in a difficult situation. It's very, very reactive. ANS in the first place. So your body has something called the ANS, the autonomic nervous system, and its job is to regulate stress in your body. And we talk about stress here. We've mentioned this before. We're talking about the stress chemicals, things like adrenaline and noradrenaline and cortisol. And, essentially, the more of those chemicals you have in your body, the more heightened and the more dysregulated you become. So you upregulate in situations that you find scary or intimidating or when you're experiencing high levels of anxiety. Your ANS kicks into gear and it increases the stress in your system. That's the sympathetic nervous system. You've also got parasympathetic nervous system. Its job is to down regulate. So when you're feeling safe or when you need to rest and digest food, often it's called the rest and digest system. What it does is it kind of reduces the level of those stress chemicals. You you've got a nerve in your body called the vagus nerve, which you may have heard of, and its job is to down regulate. So we are going to write a program of support, a plan that responds to how the child's autonomic nervous system reacts to different stresses and threats in the environment and teaches important self regulation skills. We want to prevent that upregulation system becoming sensitive or kicking into gear, and we're gonna teach children how to cope in situations that they find frustrating. So there's two kind of arms to this. And I'm gonna say it from, we're gonna squeeze. We normally do a full days face to face training on this. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna squeeze all of the key points into this podcast episode. Okay. So let's look at part 1 of the plan which is how do we manage the environment so our kids don't get too upregulated, too stressed, too anxious in the first place. So there's been some really interesting work that's been done by Stuart Shanker and his team, and we do have an interview with Stuart Shanker. I think it was episode 3 or 4, right at the start of the podcast that looks at what kind of situations provoke stress in children. What causes that autonomic nervous system to move from DEFCON 5 to DEFCON CON 1 and increases those stress chemicals. And it turns out these kind of fit into 5 categories. And the first category is physical stress. So here we we're thinking about the environment and the child's physical state. So if you are tired, stress chemicals in your body go up. If you haven't eaten, stress chemicals go up. If you haven't had anything to drink, your stress chemicals go up. If you're in the presence of a person or an animal or situation which you think is going to cause you physical danger, your stress goes up. But when we think about the environment here, we're also thinking about things like sensory information. Is the child experiencing sensory overload or underload? Are they hyper or hyposensitive to certain senses? When a child is trying to manage a sensory load that isn't regulated for them, that increases their physical stress. So there are all sorts of elements of the physical body and the physical environment that if we don't manage them are gonna lead to increased stress. Then we've got emotional stress, which I think everyone kind of instinctively understands if you're feeling frustrated or angry or sad, that is gonna affect your stress levels. Then in the classroom, we've got cognitive stress. And that is when we're thinking and working on problems and using our working memory, and we're switching facts backwards and forwards, and we're focusing and concentrating, that increases the stress levels in our body. We've also got social stress. So if you've got a child who's not quite sure how to fit in and be accepted by the group and they don't understand the sort of customs or what to say or do in certain situations to be included as part of the group and experience the safety of the group, That's gonna fuel their stress. And then you've got prosocial stress. And prosocial stress is all about thinking beyond yourself, perhaps giving way on your own ideas to accommodate other peoples. It's about participating in a team. It's putting the team's needs and other people's needs above your own. And all of those will impact on the stress. And, again, this is stress chemicals, not I've had a difficult day stress. On the autonomic nervous system, all of those things are gonna up regulate and they're gonna impact on each other that move the child towards dysregulation. What we then need to do is we need to think about what stresses are affecting each child, because each child has got an individual profile. No two children are the same. Some might have social anxiety and, you know, emotional stress. Others might be more affected by sensory needs and how they contribute to the group. So what we then need to do is we need to go into the classroom and carefully observe and work alongside the child. And if they're older, potentially talk to them and get their input about what they think causes them to feel frustrated or stressed or upset, and actually sort of create a profile about the stresses that are causing the child to be upregulated. And then once we know what that profile looks like, then we go about putting in place compensation strategies to support the child. So if the child has a sensory need and they're finding the noises in the classroom painful or difficult to regulate, then it might be something as simple as ear defenders. If they're coming in in the morning and they're hungry because they're not having breakfast, an easy way of meeting and compensating for that stress is to offer them a piece of toast when they come in. And so all about putting in place support strategies or tailoring the environment where it's possible to do that in a reasonable way to buffer them against those drivers of stress. And when we do that, the autonomic nervous system doesn't go up to DEFCON 5. The autonomic nervous system sort of down regulates. It stays calm. It moves down to DEFCON 1 or 2. The child kind of feels more relaxed in the environment, and then we're much less likely to see the child get dysregulated, and then we will see fewer meltdowns or anger outbursts and things like that.

Emma Shackleton: 13:28

Yeah. That was such a good explanation, Simon. And while you were talking about the environment, it brought my mind back to the episode with Frances Akinde where she spoke about neuro-inclusive classrooms, and that's a really good one if you're interested in looking at the environment as a whole. It's a good one to go back and get some strategies from.

Simon Currigan: 13:47

Yeah. And, also, when you think about that, actually, one thing I forgot to mention was the structure of tasks is also really, really important because when the structure of the task is wrong, that fuels the child's autonomic nervous system and increases stress.

Emma Shackleton: 14:01

Yeah. So give an example of the structure of a task being wrong for that child, because it might not mean that the teacher's doing it wrong, but it might mean it's not suiting that individual child. Can you explain a bit more about that? .

Simon Currigan: 14:13

Yeah. Absolutely. Let's take the example of working memory. Perhaps you're doing a piece of work that means that the child needs to juggle lots of pieces of information and kind of like synthesize them together and put some ideas down on the page. Some children, if they find it difficult to use their working memory, may actually need to use a mini whiteboard to jot ideas down or they may may need to talk about those ideas with another person to make them concrete and help them kind of synthesize and combine these ideas together and swap those facts backwards and forwards. But if you're asking them to work in silence or without that many whiteboards, you're taking away the compensating strategy that the child needs to access the task, and then they're gonna get more and more stressed and then more and more dysregulated. So it's about how we can tailor the task in a reasonable way to meet the needs of the child's stress profile.

Emma Shackleton: 15:04

Yeah. You're talking about reasonable adjustments here.

Simon Currigan: 15:06

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Emma Shackleton: 15:08

So part 1 then is managing that upregulation by looking at the individual pupil, detecting start is teaching the child what to do when they start to feel dysregulated, because that's still gonna happen. We can only put so many accommodations into place. And in life, it is normal and healthy to feel stressed at times. But what we want is for that child to recognise what the feeling is, where it's generated, why it's there, what it's called, and then we can start to think about strategies. Traditional techniques or traditional targets tend to be I can target. So I saw a lot of those over the years where people had said, you know, I will I can keep my hands and feet to myself, or I can put my hand up to ask the teacher a question. And, actually, those are really tricky targets to be successful with if the child hasn't got the self regulation skills to match. So instead of calling out, if they're very impulsive, they can have a target that tells them not to call out. But if they haven't got the attached strategies of what to do instead of calling out and and a way to regulate their emotions, they're gonna keep on failing with this target. So that's why we like what we call implementation intentions. So we need the child to have a prompt or a cue or a trigger to know when to put the strategy into place. So targets can be worded in such a way that the child is helped to know, okay. You've taught me a strategy. Now I need a little prompt to hang it on. When am I supposed to do this strategy? And you can use when and then for that. So you can say, when I want to give my answer, then I need to put my hand up. And we can even add another step here so we can use transformative implementation intentions. So we can stick with the when, but we can say when instead of and I will. So when I want to give an answer, instead of shouting out, I will put my hand up and wait for the teacher to ask me. So we've got to think about structuring the target so that the child understands what strategy they are going to do. If ever we're trying to stop a behaviour, we need to start another behaviour. You can't just ask a child to stop doing something and then expect there to be a void or a gap. And we mustn't always assume that the child understands what they should be doing instead. I think lots of times in schools, we can fall into the trap of correcting children's behaviour by saying stop or don't or telling them not to do something, and we forget to give the prompt or the reminder of what we do want them to do. And when a child's dysregulated and not thinking clearly, it can be very difficult for them to work out what they should be doing instead. So we can make this really simple and explicit to them. And the trigger shouldn't be when I'm angry because at that point, once they're angry, they're already top of the scale if we think of a naught to ten. If they're at 10 or even 9 or 8, they're not doing very much logical, sensitive thinking and processing. So there's no way they're gonna be able to put a strategy into place at that point. What happens is a feeling, a big emotion is coming. It comes like a wave. It washes over them, and it's too late for them to put the strategy into place. What we want is children being able to identify their emotions much sooner. So we could replace when I'm angry, when I'm getting frustrated, for example. So we're recognizing before we get to the top of the scale, the child can feel that the emotion is coming, and they know when to put the strategy into place. Otherwise, what tends to happen is we give children a list of strategies. We tell them to take a deep breath, have a drink of water, tell the teacher. They're not in all the right places, but they can't possibly put that strategy into place because they are overwhelmed with the emotion. And that's setting them up to fail. And often afterwards, they're quite sad and they're quite sorry or remorseful about how they behaved or what they said, but they didn't have a chance of getting the strategy into place at the right time because they were already overwhelmed. So for children with poor emotional self awareness, and that's not just little children, that can be older kids and adults actually, we've got to be explicit and break it down.

Simon Currigan: 20:03

A trick here is for kids with poor emotional self awareness. So these are the kids that find it difficult to recognize the internal bodily changes that happen when we move towards anger or anxiety. So it might be they don't recognize the body symbols of the stomach changing and having butterflies or having a headache. They find it really difficult to link those sort of signals that come from our body, the muscle tenseness and things like that to labels like anger or anxiety or whatever the emotion might be. A great trick here is find something they can observe themself doing that signifies that they're moving towards a dysregulated state. So an example might be, we've reserved a child and we've worked with them. And although they find it difficult to recognize their heart rate goes up and they feel hot and that that means anger for them, one tell with their behaviour that they might have that they're becoming angry is they start tapping on their desk with their pencil repeatedly over and over and over. This is something the child can see themself doing. It's a concrete action. So instead of saying, when I'm getting frustrated, if they can't access that, what we can do is we can say, when I notice I'm tapping the desk, this is an external sign they can observe rather than kind of an internal trigger. I will call that kind of an external signal. And that's a great way of helping pupils who pour emotional self awareness recognize that their state is changing.

Emma Shackleton: 21:30

That's a really interesting one, isn't it? And often it's about gently reflecting back to the child. They might not realize that they start tapping the desk when they're feeling frustrated or when they're getting a bit worked up about it. So just gently reflecting that back, being reflective, saying things like, I've noticed that you're tapping on the table. I'm wondering if that means, you know, I've noticed that you're tapping on the table. I'm wondering if that means that you're feeling a bit worried about this, or I've noticed that you're tapping the table. I'm thinking you might be getting a bit anxious about this task. So you're emotion coaching by reflecting back the observable behaviours that you can see and linking them with a sensible guess about what the feeling might be underneath. So then the child can start to tune in to their own body and what it's doing, and then that gives them the cue for when to use the strategy. And it's really important that any targets that we write are written with the child. Of course, we need to include them. We need to use the language that they use. We do a lot of work of helping children recognize their emotions, and it's always fascinating to me. Some children have got a very, very limited vocabulary. They know happy, sad, and mad. That's about it. And some children use quite technical terms. They might use anxiety or stress or depressed or frustrated. So go with the words that they use to describe the way that they feel, and then it makes sense to them. And, of course, this assumes that the child that we're working with actually wants to make a change. So they're not happy with the way that things are going. They don't like feeling overwhelmed and and struggling. It's not about us coercing or making them change their behaviour that's not gonna work. The only person's behaviour that we can a 100% change is our own. And if you want to hear more about the states of change model that can be really insightful when you're trying to make behavior changes in other people, pop back to episode 79 and 80 of the podcast where we go into that in more detail.

Simon Currigan: 23:41

So we write an implementation intention or a transformative implementation intention when instead of I will. Now that's not enough. What we need to do next is rehearse it practically a lot. It's not enough just to talk about the different behavior and the triggers that we'd like the child to engage in. I want to give you an example, a a good parallel from the real world. So my daughter is about to turn 17. She's going to want to learn to drive a car. Right? So on her 17th birthday, what I'm not gonna do is say, oh, well done. Happy birthday. You're at an age now where you can learn to drive. I'm not gonna give her a book and say, I want you to read that book. It's going to tell you how to change gears, how to use the windscreen wipers, you know, how to operate a car, and then say, okay. You've read the book. You now know what to do. There's the keys to the car. Have at it. Please don't crash. Right? Because when we're learning to drive a car, that's not how we learn to do it. It's procedural knowledge. We need someone sat alongside us and what we need to do this. You need to do this. You need to do this. And then as we're doing it, you know, we practice it physically. You don't learn to drive a car by reading a book. You learn to drive a car by sitting in the car and repeatedly practicing gear changes and repeatedly practicing 3 point turns until you've got it, until it becomes automatic knowledge, until it kinda bakes into your muscle memory. And what's interesting is when you're upregulated, when you're becoming heightened, your ability to recall factual memories, it kind of fades away. So if we're teaching children what to do when they become angry or when they need to what what to do to participate in a whole class time of putting their hand up and not shouting out. Right? We we can talk that through like it's a fact, but we need to recognize that the more dysregulated the child becomes, the harder it becomes for them to access that part of their brain. Conversely, automatic memories that we've practiced repeatedly over and over and over and baked into this kind of automatic habitual reaction to a trigger. Under stress, when we become upregulated, our access to those actually becomes stronger, not weaker because they're recorded in an entirely different part of the brain. So if we can create an automatic behavior through repetition and practice over and over and over, when the child actually needs it, they're gonna have access to it. So what does that look like? Well, whether it's a regulation technique, a social script, using a sensory aid, asking for adult support, whatever that transformative behavior is, we need to practice it with a child over and over and over. So to take the example of a child putting up their hand to join in with whole class time, that's gonna involve sitting down with a child on the carpet or in the room, whatever that age they are in their chair. And getting them to practice, you say, I'm gonna stand at the front and you're gonna try and recreate that situation as best as you can so they're experiencing the same triggers in the same room or the same location. They say, okay. I want you to ask a question while I'm going to read from this book, and we're gonna practice doing it the right way. And when they do, you have a little celebration, and then we rinse and repeat over and over and over until that behavior becomes embedded. If if it's an issue around managing anger during football, then the place to practice that and rehearse it and repeat it is out where the child will need it, Preferably out on the playground or out on the field where they play football, where all of the cues are. And then when we embed that and it becomes an automatic memory, it means actually we've set them up for success because when they hit the trigger, then they have an automatic memory they can kind of use rather than struggling to remember what Sir said about managing my anger when I lose a game of football because I'm trying to access a piece of factual memory. That I now can't access anyway because that part of my brain is shit down.

Emma Shackleton: 27:31

So to put together a regulation plan, first, work out what the environmental stresses are.

Simon Currigan: 27:38

Put Put in place support strategies based on the pupil's individual stress profile, which will involve information and collaboration with the pupil.

Emma Shackleton: 27:47

Identify coping strategies with the pupil.

Simon Currigan: 27:51

Write them up as a transformative implementation strategy in the form of when I experience a trigger, instead of my old behaviour, I will, the positive behaviour.

Emma Shackleton: 28:01

And then practice, practice, practice. And that's how to write a structured regulation plan based on your pupils' specific individual needs.

Simon Currigan: 28:12

Found this information useful? Then don't keep it to yourself. Share it with your friends and colleagues so they can develop effective regulation plans for the kids that they work with when they return to school as well. All you have to do is hit the share button on your podcast app, and you'll be able to send them a direct link to this episode, and you will also give the option to share this episode on your socials.

Emma Shackleton: 28:34

And now as promised, it's time for our big news about the podcast. Drumroll, please.

Simon Currigan: 28:43

Yes. So the podcast has remained in the same format for over 3 years now. And after we sort of consulted and talked with our community, we thought it was time for a bit of a change and to mix things up to keep things fresh.

Emma Shackleton: 28:57

So don't panic. The podcast isn't going away, but it is going to sound a little different.

Simon Currigan: 29:05

Teachers are telling us because they're so busy, they don't necessarily have time to listen to these longer podcast episodes. So as I'm recording this, this episode's probably gonna last about 35 minutes long. So what we're looking at doing is sharing shorter, more focused episodes with a strong emphasis on having 1 or 2 strategies, concepts, insights, or ideas that you can use immediately in school.

Emma Shackleton: 29:32

So the best bits in a quick fire shot, you mean?

Simon Currigan: 29:35

Yeah. Absolutely.

Emma Shackleton: 29:36

With the hope that we can make the podcast even more practical and something that you can take away and use immediately.

Simon Currigan: 29:44

That doesn't mean we'll stop talking about the science and the research behind the techniques, but podcast episodes are going to be more bite sized and easier to digest.

Emma Shackleton: 29:54

And for those of you that like video, to help reinforce your learning in multiple ways, both through sound and visual means, we're also going to be releasing videos that go alongside the podcast.

Simon Currigan: 30:06

All with the aim of giving you the best possible information in a way that you can go out and use so you can have a real impact in your classroom.

Emma Shackleton: 30:14

Exciting times. So this is the last episode before we take a break for the summer. We'd like to wish everyone a well earned, relaxing, and rejuvenating holiday. Get some rest and recovery time. You deserve it, and we'll see you in September when schools return after the holidays in England in about 6 weeks' time.

Simon Currigan: 30:35

Have a brilliant break. You've deserved it. We'll see you on the other side.

Emma Shackleton: 30:39

Bye, everyone.

Simon Currigan: 30:40

Bye.