Phil

← All courses

Five-session mentoring course

Emotional regulation

Who it's for

Consider this course for a pupil showing:

  • Big reactions to small setbacks or changes in routine
  • Struggles to calm down without adult help, once upset
  • Alternates between shutdown and outburst rather than a steady middle ground
  • Limited emotion vocabulary beyond 'fine' or 'angry', and regulation difficulties appear across several settings

What it works towards

  • Build a working vocabulary for a wider range of emotions
  • Understand the physical link between body and feelings
  • Learn and practise a personal toolkit of regulation strategies
  • Generalise strategies from the mentoring room into the classroom

The five sessions

  1. Session 1 Naming my feelings Pupil can name at least five emotions beyond 'happy', 'sad' and 'angry'.
  2. Session 2 My body and my feelings Pupil can identify physical sensations linked to at least two emotions.
  3. Session 3 Calming strategies Pupil can try two grounding or calming techniques.
  4. Session 4 Riding the wave Pupil understands emotions rise and fall, and can describe a personal 'wave'.
  5. Session 5 My emotional toolkit Pupil has a personalised emotional toolkit shared with key staff.

A sixth session follows, without the pupil: the mentor writes the support plan and agrees next steps.

The approach, and where it comes from

This module uses a simple four-state model, describing how a pupil is in plain words rather than borrowed labels, alongside simple mindfulness and grounding techniques, giving pupils a shared, non-judgemental language for talking about how they feel. It follows the DfE's Mental health and behaviour in schools advice, which asks staff to consider whether behaviour may be an expression of an underlying difficulty with regulating emotion, rather than treating it purely as wilful misconduct. This also contributes to the personal development and well-being evaluation area in Ofsted's inspection framework, which considers how well pupils learn to understand and manage their own emotions.

Try it with a small group

Three weeks free, no card, up to three staff and ten pupils. Everything recorded during the trial carries over if you continue.

Start the free pilot

Or read the white paper, which sets out the evidence behind each of the twenty courses.

The other courses