What did you create?
For my personal project, I created 19 zones of regulation pyramids to be used within a grade 2 classroom. The zones of regulation are an emotional tool that is used within a classroom mentally or verbally as a way to allow children to regulate their emotions, I took the zones and created a physical and visual object that allows for teachers to see and understand the student’s emotions during class as well as making it easier for students to express their emotions.

Why did you create this?
I created this because I had an interest in how emotions affected a student within a classroom and was especially interested in how children were affected more by their emotions within a classroom due to not having developed fully the skill of regulating their emotions. Knowing that emotions could hinder a child’s learning within a classroom I decided to make my product in order to help children develop the skill of regulating their emotions in a hands-on, visual manner.

What were the biggest challenges you faced?
The biggest challenges I faced were first, time, specifically when creating the product, I struggled to complete all of them by the deadline due to being such a large number, it was a lot of sewing to do. Secondly, I struggled with meetings, due to covid it was hard to meet up to converse, specifically on campus due to no cross overs as well as different schedules this means I had to communicate in other ways with my supervisors and those I was collaborating with on this project as well as not being able to introduce my project in person to the class but rather I had to do it online in order to follow the regulations. This made it harder to get first-hand feedback or interact better with the students and those I was working with, although it did allow for me to solve more challenges throughout my project for learning experience.

What advice would you give to next year’s PP students?
I would advise for the students to make sure to do something they are interested in, its a long project that becomes easier if its something you enjoy, also to make sure to stay on track, plan your time and follow it, falling behind creates a large build-up of work that can be hard to catch up on.