At Southroyd we are committed to supporting emotional wellbeing and mental health - we access the excellent resources from MindMate to support a progression for developing mental health and wellbeing across the year groups. We thread the model into our Big Talk and assembly planning, with classes delivering resources directly from MindMate.
MindMate is a Leeds-based website for young people, their families and the professionals who support them. They’re here to help you explore emotional wellbeing and mental health issues and offer information about where support is available.
Intent for Mindmate at Southroyd
At Southroyd we want our children to have strong mental health. We want our children to understand mental health, know how they and their families and friends can be impacts and affected by mental health and how to keep their mental health healthy. We want them to understand that sometimes people can suffer from mental health problems and struggle with their mental health but we also want them to know what can help and how they can help to get themselves and others back on track.
Implementation of Mindmate at Southroyd
Our Mindmate curriculum is carefully planned out to meet the need so of the children at Southroyd and to ensure that it supports then through the different challenges a school year brings such as changes and transitions. It is a spiralised curriculum which focuses around these topic subjects which give children a broad and balance knowledge bank about mental health. As a spiralised curriculum each year group works on the same topic each term but they all have their own focus within the overarching theme. (see long term plan for Mindmate).
We launch each half term Mind Mate theme in a whole school assembly. This is then worked at in classes over that half term as part of our PSHE lessons and the theme is communicated with our community in our newsletter.
Autumn 1 - Strong emotions.
Autumn 2 - Solving Problems and Making things Better.
Spring 1 - Feeling good and being me.
Spring 2 - Friends and Family.
Summer 1 - Being the same, being different
Summer 2 - Life changes.
Lessons as planned to use the oracy skills we have been working on as a school. We also build extra learning into our sessions around growth mindset and healthy life style choices such as meditation, yoga and relaxation techniques. Teaching staff also make links to our whole school approach of emotional managed; The Zones of Regulation. This alongside our high expectations of children and the excellent relationships school staff have with them means our children are equipped with a tool bank or skills and knowledge that they can draw on when times get hard.
Impact of Mindmate at Southroyd
The Mindmate curriculum at Southroyd has a positive impact on our children. They understand and can discuss the importance of a healthy mind and a positive mindset. They have the skills to control their emotions and understand that it is ok to feel every emotion that we feel. They know there is no such thing as a negative or bad emotion. All emotions are normal and healthy and should be experienced and felt but should also be managed. The emotion is not the problem it is your reaction, management and behaviours around the emotions that is key.
Children at Southroyd have emotional understanding and awareness but more importantly they have emotional literacy and the skills, knowledge and language to articulate and discuss how they are feeling, know when to see support from friends or adults and understand how they can help themselves positively.
