Psychosocial support as a route to healing

1. Buddy schemes. We use a staff-student buddy scheme for Year 7 students who are struggling with the transition from primary school. Teachers meet with the students every Thursday lunchtime to have an open conversation about how their week has gone – teachers also share how their week has been, modelling how they overcame difficulties and what they achieved. We have now expanded this idea, developing a new buddy scheme for staff and newcomer refugee students, as we have received several refugee students in recent months. We have found the confidence of the students and their behaviour in class has improved drastically. We found the IRC’s Emotion Tracker and Weekly Reflection Sheet to be useful tool in guiding our weekly conversations. For student buddy schemes, try the IRC’s Being a Buddy Toolkit. 2. Goal setting and praise. We have a praise jar in our classroom where anyone can anonymously post praise for another student or the whole class. At first, students were nervous to post anything in the jar but now they love opening the jar on Friday afternoons and sharing. Students look so proud when their name is read out and students have become much more aware of soft skills and social emotional skills, and I have modelled praising not just academic achievements but skills like being an excellent listener, supporting an upset classmate, being determined even during a difficult task. 3. Conversation club. Every Wednesday, we invite parents to our 1-hour conversation club in the cafeteria. We offer coffee and toast, and a member of staff uses the free British Council teaching resources to teach English. Some parents know more English than others and help each other to learn. 4. Grounding exercises. We use the IRC’s Mindfulness Moment cards and have them on display in class. After lunch, we spend five minutes on mindfulness and then transition calmly into our lesson. We also use the IRC check-in cards at the beginning of lessons to help students label their mood and emotions and to adapt our activities to either uplift their mood or calm them down. We have resource banks available in all classrooms with IRC’s Feelings Volcano, Feelings Thermometer and Zone of Regulation worksheets. 5. Games. We use games as part of our revision classes for GCSE History. We have dice, question cards and game board made by students and they move around the room to play the games based on different exam topics. 6. Skills building sessions. In the final weeks of summer term, we take the whole school out onto the playing fields and run a half-day team building workshop. Teachers are assigned a skill (for example, problem solving or conflict resolution) and are given an activity to lead (for example, the human knot or catch the flag). The students walk around the different activities and are in teams of mixed ages.