Just Right – Supporting Sensory & Emotional Regulation
What is the Just Right approach?
At Downsbrook Primary, we use the Just Right approach to support children’s sensory and emotional regulation, helping them understand how they are feeling and what they can do to feel calm, focused and ready to learn.
Just Right is a programme developed by specialist teachers and health professionals to support children who may find it difficult to regulate their emotions, behaviour, attention or levels of alertness. While it was originally designed to support children with autism and sensory processing differences, it is beneficial for all children and forms part of our inclusive, whole-school approach to wellbeing.
Why do we use Just Right?
Some children experience the world more intensely or less intensely than others due to differences in how they process sensory information. Sensory experiences help us to:
- Understand the world and our place in it
- Develop motor coordination and thinking skills
- Regulate how alert, calm or focused we feel
Sensory information comes from:
- Touch, taste, smell, sight and sound
- Movement (vestibular sense)
- Awareness of where our body is in space (proprioceptive sense)
Some children may feel overwhelmed (sensory overload) or under-stimulated, making it harder to regulate emotions, attention and behaviour.
The Just Right approach provides a simple, supportive way for children to understand these feelings without needing complex language at times when they may already feel overwhelmed.
The Just Right colour zones
Just Right uses a clear four-colour system to help children recognise and communicate how they are feeling:
- Green – “Just Right”
Calm, alert, focused and ready to learn - Orange – “Fizzy”
Over-alert, anxious, restless or hyper - Blue – “Floppy or Fidgety”
Tired, bored, under-stimulated or not alert - Red – “Crisis”
Overwhelmed, unable to cope, shutting down or showing challenging behaviour
The colour system replaces the need for lots of emotional vocabulary and allows children to quickly identify their state and access support.
What does Just Right look like in school?
Children’s levels of alertness naturally change throughout the day, and the Just Right chart helps them recognise when they are moving out of the green (Just Right) zone.
Once a child identifies their colour zone, a supportive strategy can be chosen to help them return to feeling calm and regulated. These strategies are always personalised and may include:
- Having a consistent seat or routine
- Short bursts of movement or exercise
- Time in a calm, quiet space
- Sensory tools or activities to either calm or alert the body
We work closely with children and parents to understand:
- What each colour zone feels like for that individual child
- What triggers changes in alertness
- What practical strategies help them feel “Just Right”
Working together with families
An important part of the Just Right approach is consistency. The strategies children use in school can also be used at home, helping children feel supported across all areas of their lives.
Impact
Just Right is embedded into our daily practice at Downsbrook Primary and has had a significant positive impact on children’s wellbeing, emotional regulation and readiness to learn. Parents tell us that the approach has helped their children — and families — far beyond the classroom.
By giving children simple tools to understand themselves, we help them build confidence, resilience and lifelong emotional awareness.
A parent booklet with information on 'Just Right' at Downsbrook is available HERE.