All members of staff have been trained in the Thrive approach.
What is Thrive?
Thrive is a therapeutic approach to help support children with their emotional and social development. It is a whole school approach based around, current studies of effective learning and current models of child development – in order to help the school to understand the needs being signalled by children’s behaviour. Research has shown that how we behave is linked to how we feel and our emotions are linked to how we learn. By teaching children to recognise and notice these feelings and emotions it can help with their development and learning.
Thrive promotes their emotional and social growth by building positive relationships between a child, their peers and the teaching staff and helps them explore and understand their feelings through various activities.
The Thrive approach offers strategies and techniques and is built around online assessments which identify children’s emotional development and provides action plans for their individual needs. Whole class action plans are completed twice a year devised to address some specific needs and delivered through PSHE lessons, supporting areas such as sharing, turn taking, importance of rules and respectful behaviour.
Who has Thrive sessions?
Everyone! Though they might not realise it. All of our pupils have access to regular class-based Thrive activities and the Thrive approach. However, some children need a little bit extra. Some children will also require individual or small group sessions. The thrive approach enables us to pick out the specific difficulties and plan activities to address these. Some of the typical areas we work on in Thrive sessions are:
- Building connections with others.
- Finding it hard to settle in the classroom.
- Managing strong feelings.
- Difficulties with friendships.
- Not knowing who to turn to when feelings are too big to manage on their own.
These situations can lead to many different feelings which may seem overwhelming at times. They might include: anger, frustration, sadness, loneliness, confusion or anxiety.
All these feelings are very normal and happen to a lot of children. The Thrive sessions are to help children learn to manage their feelings and teach them strategies that will help promote their learning at school.
What will happen in a Thrive session?
Thrive is based on neurological evidence which addresses brain development so that all children learn to regulate their emotional responses, develop resilience and manage disappointment and frustration.
All children (and adults!) need a little emotional support when things are going wrong. Thrive provides a way of understanding and addressing the
emotional and social development of children. Just like when a child is experiencing difficulties with some parts of the learning curriculum their work is supported through repeated activities until they develop the correct understanding. Thrive sessions are similar in the sense that they provide reparative work to children who are experiencing difficulties with their emotional and social development.
The session may be on an individual basis or as part of a small group of children and will usually take place in our Thrive room. During each session there will be an activity which may include:
- Story telling
- Arts and crafts
- Sand play
- Yoga and relaxation
- Cooking and preparing food
- Role play
- Games
- Lego
- Conflict resolution
- Self esteem
We aim to:
- Provide alternative support for children who are experiencing emotional, social or behavioural difficulties.
- Provide a safe and calm environment for children to learn to regulate their emotions.
- Enable children to use power with responsibility and form relationships and positive connections with others.
- Use positive approaches to manage behaviour
For more information about the Thrive approach please visit Home - The Thrive Approach to social and emotional wellbeing or get in touch with Mrs White via the school office.
