4, 3, 2, 1 - The Incredible Five Point Scale

I was in a foul mood this morning.  I’d got it into my head that it was going to be a rainy Saturday so I stayed in bed too late only to then discover it was lovely and sunny and it felt like I’d wasted too much of the morning.  Then I was rude to a Jehova’s Witness, which isn’t like me, and I felt bad.  Then I made coffee with gone-off milk.  Throw in general tiredness, weird dreams and inconsiderate neighbours and by the time I left the flat, I was a ‘four’.

If you don’t know the five-point scale, a ‘four’ is close to meltdown.  I use it with my class of autistic boys to reflect on our feelings, learn more about emotions and develop strategies to manage them.  As its name suggests, it runs from one to five.  At ‘one’, we might feel relaxed, blissful, confident and at ease; we smile, laugh, chat, joke, play and it’s easy to focus on our work and learning.  At ‘five’, we might be depressed, distraught, incensed or aggressive; we shout, cry, hide, punch, kick, throw things and it’s impossible to do anything productive.

Every morning at school, we all share our five-point scale ‘score’ and describe our feelings, then throughout the day, we record our ‘score’ and reflect on our changing emotions.  We’re learning new, more nuanced vocabulary for them too and we talk about strategies for managing our emotions.  What does a ‘three’ look, sound and feel like?  What can you do when you’re a ‘three’, you don’t want to become a ‘four’ and you want to de-escalate to a ‘two’ or a ‘one’?  My own five-point scale is on the wall for my students to see.

I pretty much stormed out of the flat this morning after snapping, ‘It’s no good!  I’m just going out!’  It wasn’t until I caught myself shouting at myself in my otherwise empty car with that knotted feeling in my tummy that my own five-point scale kicked in.  Storming out of the flat without knowing where I was going to go was pretty irrational – a heat of the moment impulse.  However, my own five-point scale that I’ve shared with my class – drawn up in more rational moment – tells me what to do: I need to be by myself and it helps to go out for a walk.

So that’s what I did.  I live close to Hengistbury Head - a beautiful nature reserve in Bournemouth with the sea on one side and Christchurch Harbour on the other.  After about twenty minutes walking, I was a ‘three’.  Watching carefree young children play on their bikes and scooters helped.  The bright sunshine falling green through the leaves and the sound of the wind blowing through the trees helped.  The simple smiled greetings from strangers walking their cheerful dogs helped.  It all helped to put things in perspective – a concept, I thought, that it’s important I teach my class.

Above all, the wildlife, especially the birds, helped me.  I paused frequently, listening intently to an unrecognisable bird’s song; it’s fun trying to work out which tree it’s coming from and to find the elusive songster among the leaves and branches.  I watched a stonechat flit from gorse to gorse, egrets striding through a marshy field, a hungry hovering kestrel and gulls battling against the strong wind.  Bright-legged waders sifting through the water with their long bills were especially engaging.  I couldn’t work out what they were – probably redshanks but they looked greyer than the ones in my book.  I lost myself in watching them for about twenty minutes, oblivious to anything else around me.  Focusing so hard on this one thing, simply living in that particular moment without a thought for another was, I realised, a wonderful exercise in mindfulness.  Thus, I became a ‘two’.

I went home feeling much happier, maybe not quite a ‘one’ but not far off.  I think I’ll tell my class this story on Monday.  It will surprise them because they know I rarely reach four or five but perhaps it will also help them to understand that there’s no shame in reaching that stage if we can diminish the impact on those around us and we have strategies that help to manage our emotions.  It was a powerful reminder for me of the value of the five-point scale.  In a simple, numeric score, it sums up and communicates so much but it is also an effective tool for teaching young people about emotions, how to recognise and describe them, how to manage them and in doing so, how to protect their emotional wellbeing.

For more information about the five-point scale, I recommend ‘The Incredible 5-Point Scale: The Significantly Improved and Expanded Second Edition’ by Kari Dunn Buron and Mitzi Curtis.