"A growing body of research shows that pupils who are emotionally healthy do better at school. PSHE education helps children and young people to achieve their potential by supporting their wellbeing and tackling issues that can affect their ability to learn, such as anxiety and unhealthy relationships." (PSHE Association, 2016)

The aim of our Life skills curriculum is to prepare today’s children for tomorrow’s world by building resilient, balanced and happy minds at school and at home. Our Life skills curriculum aligns with the National Curriculum covering British Values, Relationships Education and Personal, Social and Health Education. It is split into three core themes:

• Healthy Movement, Habits & Thoughts
• Relationships
• Living in the wider world

Our Life skills curriculum is part of everything we do at Tyntesfield. We always strive to find opportunities within the school day to teach our pupils about values, friendships, diversity, money, looking after ourselves and much more. This is done through other curriculum subjects such as Computing, Science and Woody Wanderers or taught discretely when necessary.

Lifeskills Curriculum

These days are progressive and structured, taking place once a half term, aiming to teach the children about their brain, character strengths, gratitude, building positive relationships, goal setting and engaging with the world. The children explore important topics such as child on child abuse and being kind to ourselves. Our Wellness Wednesdays have been a fantastic opportunity for the children to learn about key life skills, whilst also providing them with the opportunity to reflect and develop as individuals.

During Wellness Wednesdays, pupils complete Gratitude Journals to support them in developing gratitude as a habit. They reflect upon what they are proud of, who they are thankful for, how their friends would describe them and what they are lucky for. We are so excited to see how the pupils continue to build their skills of appreciation, confidence and resilience to develop as reflective learners who will thrive in tomorrow’s world.

Wellness Wednesdays explore the following progressive themes:

• Meet your brain: How does my brain work? Learn to notice when our brain is working well and feeling stressed.
• Celebrate: Understand and celebrate our character strengths. Use our strengths to promote super hero powers.
• Appreciate: Developing gratitude as a habit.
• Relate: Building positive relationships. Active listening and understanding others perspectives.
• Engage: Engaging with the world and goal setting. What do I want to achieve? Understand that accomplishment can lead to happiness.

Wellness Wednesdays

Through consultation with parents, staff and governors, as a school we created our Life Skills curriculum framework which incorporates the teaching of Relationships Education. Following statutory guidance, our Relationships Education objectives focus on teaching the fundamental building blocks and characteristics of positive and healthy relationships. This begins with pupils being taught what a relationship is, what friendship is, what family means and who the people are that can support them. Within this, we recognise at Tyntesfield the importance of teaching pupils how to take turns, how to treat each other with kindness, being honest and truthful and an understanding of personal privacy and permission seeking and giving.

All of our Relationship Education objectives are taught age appropriately from Year 1, either discretely or covered through Wellness Wednesdays and other subject areas, such as Science and Computing. Please refer to our Online Safety Curriculum for an in depth overview of how we support our pupils with managing online relationships in a responsible, positive, respectful and safe manner. Visits from the NSPCC and the school nurse have allowed us to cover important topics such as how to recognise and report feelings of being unsafe and has supported staff in delivering information to the Upper Key Stage 2 regarding puberty.

Our key areas of focus are as follows:

• Strand 1 –Families & people who care for me
• Strand 2 – Caring friendships
• Strand 3 – Online relationships
• Strand 4 – Respectful relationships
• Strand 5 – Safe relationships
• Strand 6 – Growing up

Outlined within the curriculum overview and school policy, you can see key terminology which will be used with pupils in each year group, as agreed during parent, staff and governor consultation.

Relationships Education