PSHCE and RSE
At the Alport, we strive to provide a structured programme of personal development to nurture the ‘whole child’ and increase learning capacity, underpinned by mindfulness philosophy and practice. We want our children to develop their skills in order to become resilient, respectful and confident members of society in the future. We learn about other cultures, religions, current affairs and trending issues so that our children have the knowledge to challenge stereotypical views and bias. We also support our children to develop their social skills in order to effectively resolve conflicts and self-regulation techniques to manage their emotions in order to promote good mental health and self-care.
Through following successful teaching and learning programmes including ‘My Happy minds’, The SCARF Coram life education and Chris winter programme, we aim to provide structured opportunities to practice and enhance the skills associated with the following-
1) Relationships - including feelings, emotions and friendships
2) Valuing differences including British values focus
3) Keeping safe – with focus on internet safety, drugs and alcohol
4) Rights and responsibilities including valuing money and living in the wider world and environment
5) Promoting a growth mindset
6) RSE
We offer opportunities for children’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) development within our curriculum lessons and we believe that these opportunities are vital for children’s development, their understanding of themselves and others and in increasing their capacity to learn.
MyHappyMind
We follow MyHappyMinds which is a complete mental and emotional wellbeing package. It is a science-backed programme which is grounded in the latest science and research about what it takes to create positive wellbeing. The programme an integral part of our RHE curriculum and is taught across five modules: Meet my Brain; Celebrate; Appreciate; Relate and Engage and each introduces a new set of content and habits to help children build resilience, self-esteem and confidence.
SCARF: Safety, Caring, Achievement, Resilience, Friendship
SCARF is our whole school programme for PSCHE. It supports in promoting positive behaviour, mental health, wellbeing, resilience and achievement.
When setting up any lesson that deals with potentially sensitive subjects, we ensure that safe, secure learning environment are created. This helps children feel confident to share their ideas, values and attitudes without fear of negative feedback from their peers. A safe learning environment with clear boundaries also helps teachers to manage discussions on sensitive issues with greater confidence.
We will:
- Link PSHE and emotional health and wellbeing education into the whole-school approach to supporting pupil welfare and safety. The use of SCARF to build a positive, respectful ethos in school can help with this.
- Work with pupils to establish ground rules about how they will behave towards each other in discussion, rather than imposing rules on them. This helps rules to be more meaningful and relevant (see examples, below).
- Ensure that ground rules/class agreements reflect the school’s wider policies and practice in relation to managing sensitive issues.
- Provide opportunities for children to ask questions anonymously, by using a Question Box or ‘Ask it Basket’, for example. This enables children to ask questions that concern them without having to do so in front of their peers.
- Offer opportunities for pupils to discuss issues in small groups as well as sharing views with the class; this can help some children to feel more confident.
- Provide balanced information including a variety of views to help pupils clarify their own opinions (whilst being clear that behaviours such as discrimination and bullying are never acceptable in any form).
- Be aware of and sensitive to the needs and experiences of individual children that may have direct experience of some of the issues being discussed.
Setting ground rules or a class working agreement
Our ground rules will be developed with each class. However, these are basic elements that will be included:
- Listen to and respect each other
- Use language that won’t offend or upset other people.
- Use the correct terms, and if we don’t know them, we’ll ask for help.
- Comment on what was said, not the person who said it.
- Don’t share our own, or our friends’, personal experiences.
- Don’t put anyone on the spot or ask personal questions
- We have the right to pass.
- Don’t judge or make assumptions about anyone.
- Provide information to children about how they can get help and support both in school and outside, as appropriate.
- Always work within the school’s policies on safeguarding and confidentiality, in particular making it clear to children your school policies on disclosure of confidential information and following up concerns in a more appropriate setting outside lessons.
- Depersonalise discussions by using distancing techniques – stories, role-play, scenarios of real situations but with fictional characters and storylines etc.