Mental Health and Well-Being at Kingsclere CE Primary School 

At Kingsclere CE Primary School, we believe happy, content children learn best. However, we recognise the challenges of managing emotions. Supporting children’s mental health and well-being begins with helping them identify and understand their emotions. This journey starts in Year R and is built upon as they progress through the school.

Zones of Regulation

In our PSHE lessons, each class takes time together to study our mood cards and explore different vocabulary, facial expressions and the internal feelings. The selection of emotions develops as the children mature and understand the finer details of some emotions such as regret or empathy. It is important to revisit this part of setting up the zone of regulation each new school year to reflect the development of the children but also the dynamic within a new class. The emotions are assigned to the different zones:

GREEN ZONE – good to go!

YELLOW ZONE – caution

BLUE ZONE – running slow

RED ZONE – stop!

The class discuss the zones and how to recognise which zone you are in and the importance of getting yourself back to the green zone! Together they decide ways to help you get yourself from one zone back to the green. These strategies can be very different depending on the age of the children. One of the wonderful effects of creating the strategies together is the children can help to support one and other in managing their regulation.

My Happy Mind is a whole school programme, backed by the NHS, that teaches the children about the science behind their brain and emotions and helps them to understand their responses as well as teaching them skills and strategies to manage them. There is a half termly module that begins with a whole school assembly and then weekly lessons in class. As well as teaching the children strategies and skills for dealing with negative emotions, it also helps us to recognise the importance of resilience and appreciation to develop the children’s positive outlook. The programme has an incredible Parent App to support children at home too. At the end of each module, we send out a parental newsletter to keep parents and carers fully informed of the learning taking place.

Please click on the link below to access previous newsletters.

Individual support

We know that, as in all areas of learning, some children may need more individualised support with their mental health and well being and for them we have different options that are carefully evaluated to find the best fit for the child. We can offer:

Emotional Literacy Support Assistant (ELSA)  – small group or 1:1 sessions with our ELSA trained Teaching Assistant, building on further strategies to manage emotions, practising scenarios, discussing appropriate responses. These sessions run for a set period of time to allow the child to develop a skill set to embed in their day-to-day life.

Transforming Lives For Good (TLG) – In partnership with St Mary’s Church we offer individual sessions with a trained coach from the local community. Each coach and student are carefully matched to get the best out of the sessions. This is a weekly session that allows the child time to talk about their experiences and emotions in a gentle, supportive approach.

Therapeutic Active Listening Assistant (TALA) – Individual sessions with a qualified TALA coach from within our staff. These sessions are led by the child talking and the coach listening and responding carefully and sensitively.