Nurture

As a whole school, we are part of the National Nurturing Schools Programme that helps staff develop and embed a nurturing culture and ethos throughout the school whilst promoting Social Emotional Mental Health (SEMH) outcomes for the whole school community. It focuses on children’s emotional needs and development alongside their academic learning, but most importantly, it encourages us all to reflect on and further develop our whole school Nurture provision. The following developments of our SEMH provision have come as a result of being part of this development program.

All classrooms now have a display or area designated to the zones of regulation. Our Year R children will begin by using the colour monster book and feelings to help to develop an understanding of emotions and how they make our bodies feel. As the children progress through the school the zones of regulation are used to label emotions with colours to help children to identify how they are feeling and regulate emotions with help and independently. 

Staff are also encouraged to use the zones of regulation to identify their emotions with the children and whole class strategies are used to help children to remain or return to the green zone.

We have also introduced a visual support book to aid restorative conversations, this provides a structure to these conversations to help children to understand their actions, their emotions and reflect on what they could do differently next time.

We have two members of staff who are trained to deliver drawing and talking therapy sessions to help children to work through emotions and feelings about something that has happened. This is a gentle and indirect approach and does not involve direct conversations or questioning.

We also have staff who have attended the EBSA training (emotion based school avoidance) so that we can work with families to help all children to attend school and work through anxieties about school and leaving home and carers in the mornings.