At St Joseph’s, PSHE learning helps children develop their awareness, skills and knowledge to keep themselves safe and to make positive and healthy lifestyle choices. We want PSHE learning to be relevant, responsive and engaging. Our intention is to open doors outwards and prepare our children for life in multi-cultural, modern Britain. We wish to promote positive, healthy habits for both physical and mental health to thrive. We want children to think, talk and make up their own minds as they explore topical issues. We want them to develop their confidence to share feelings, experiences and find their voice on issues affecting themselves, friends, family, community, country and globally. Our PSHE lessons follow the ‘You, Me & PSHE’ scheme but lessons also include teaching and learning of protected characteristics, the British Values and contextual safeguarding areas that are specific to our school: such as water safety, being so close to the River Wharfe. Active teaching strategies enable all children to come into their own as they have the chance to take on roles or to respond to scenarios. In addition, we understand that some personal and social learning is best addressed through work with small groups for example targeted emotional literacy or negotiating friendship dynamics. We also make room for individual work with children who are experiencing particular issues, such as loss, separation or bereavement.
St Josephs Approach to PSHE PSHE Long Term Plan
Tracking Progress in PSHE:
Our tracking of progress in PSHE includes ongoing teacher assessment linked to topics from the You, Me and PSHE scheme of work, as well as cohort specific, local or global issues that may arise. Children share their knowledge and understanding in a variety of ways, such as through drama, circle time and hot-seating. We also take account of how children are applying their personal, emotional and social skills in day to day life. The children complete surveys throughout the year and we respond and adapt to the outcomes of these and then track the impact of this, for example the My Health, My School Survey and Emotional Literacy surveys.
Mindmate
We are proud to have achieved Mindmate Friendly accreditation in 2019. We deliver Mindmate lessons across Key Stage 1 & 2 which is an emotional literacy curriculum designed to support class-based discussion and learning around mental health and wellbeing. The lessons are modern, engaging and fit well with our whole school approach. In our Mindmate PSHE lessons, we focus on both knowledge and skills and prioritise self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. These are the key life-skills which will prepare children to take an active, responsible role within their family, school and wider community.
Themed Weeks
Alongside our planned lessons, we add a ‘top-up’ layer, with themed weeks tailored to fit school priorities, such as our Anti-Bullying week, Living in Leeds week and Wellbeing week. We ensure that we enrich our PSHE curriculum with visitors, workshops, activities and whole school assemblies. For more information on what each class did, please visit their class page.
What does learning in PSHE look like in our school?
Further links
For more information on further links to our PSHE curriculum, please visit the pages below.
British Values RSHE Investors in Pupils School Council SEMH