Personal Development St Peter’s

At St Peter’s we are committed to educating the ‘whole child’ and place the upmost importance on nurturing pupils’ personal development through all that we do. Our aim is for our pupils to develop into the most social, emotional, moral, spiritual and resilient young people. We provide opportunities through our rich curriculum and beyond to develop our pupils’ understanding of themselves and others, which in turn, increases their capacity to learn.

PSHE Jigsaw scheme of work

Our chosen scheme of work, ‘Jigsaw’ brings the mindful approach together with Personal, Social, Health Education, emotional literacy, social skills and spiritual development in a comprehensive scheme of learning.  

It includes the teaching of British values and the SMSC(Spiritual, Moral, Social, Cultural) objectives in every lesson.  Likewise, there are structured opportunities in every lesson to practise and enhance the five skills associated with the emotional literacy (self-awareness, social skills, empathy, motivation and managing feelings).

Emotions and Behaviour

We recognise that all behaviours are driven by emotions. With this in mind, we work hard to develop pupils’ emotional intelligence and emotional literacy skills. (Please see link to Behaviour Policy and PSHE policy). We believe children need to learn to communicate their feelings and emotions to develop positive behaviours.  It is our aim to develop a child’s capacity to manage their behaviours by educating them about the emotions they are experiencing. We do this by guiding them using Emotion Coaching.  We also promote preventative behavioural strategies where possible and use our zones of regulation and Level Up-based strategies for children to use to regulate their emotions.  

Emotion coaching steps:

Mindfulness

‘How would children and their learning benefit if they could be aware of their thoughts and feelings as they happen, in the present moment, on purpose with no judgement?’

This is the definition of mindfulness from our Jigsaw scheme of work. We explicitly teach mindfulness in every PSHE lesson making use of chimes and ‘calm me’ time.  We firmly believe that when pupils recognise their thoughts and feelings, in the moment, they can become better emotionally regulated and self-reflective learners.