PSHE – Uplands Infant School

At Uplands Infant School our PSHE curriculum builds upon our children’s cultural capital, through our curriculum drivers, our children’s interests and the requirements of the National Curriculum.

We specifically promote children’s personal, social and health development and help them to grow as individuals and as members of families and communities. Our PSHE curriculum equips children with knowledge and practical skills to live healthy, safe, fulfilled and responsible lives, both now and in the future.

Through the explicit teaching of mental and emotional health, we promote children’s wellbeing through an understanding of their own and others’ emotions and the development of healthy coping strategies. It also contributes to safeguarding, providing pupils with knowledge, understanding and strategies to keep themselves healthy and safe, as well as equipping them to support others who are facing challenges.

Our curriculum also enables children to reflect on and clarify both their own and British values and attitudes, and explore the complex and sometimes conflicting range of attitudes and values they encounter now and in the future.

Through cognitive research we have designed our PSHE curriculum to aid long term retention. Our curriculum sets out a clear breadth of topics that will be taught and built upon across the key stages. Our children will organise their knowledge and understanding around the following key topics as set out in the Jigsaw scheme of work: Being me in my world, Celebrating difference, Dreams and Goals, Healthy Me and Relationships.

Our expertly designed environments, quality first teaching and learning opportunities build on the characteristics of effective learning developed in our Early Years. We call these ‘Character Muscles’: responsibility, empathy, compassion, independence, perseverance, peace, self-efficacy, collaboration, respect, resilience. Our children learn that we all possess these qualities and they can be made stronger through practice and are transferable in different contexts. Our children are taught to recognise and celebrate these behaviours in themselves and their peers.

The impact of our curriculum is that by the end of each topic, the vast majority of children have sustained mastery of the content, that is, they remember it all and are fluent in it; some children have a greater depth of understanding. We track carefully to ensure children are on track to reach the expectations of our curriculum through end of topic assessments.

Possibilities

At Uplands Infant School we recognise that children need to develop their personal development to improve their capacity to learn across the curriculum and improve their life chances. The Jigsaw scheme integrates this personal and social development work into a comprehensive Personal, Social, Health Education (Health and Well-being) curriculum which gives children a relevant context to build skills, attitudes, self- esteem, resilience and confidence.

Environment

The Jigsaw scheme brings children and adults together to feel equal, included and valued so that they can share ideas, thoughts and feelings. Sitting in a circle either all on chairs or all on the floor means adults and children are sharing the experience and learning together. Therefore, establishing a safe, open and positive learning environment based on trusting relationships between all members of the class, adults and children alike, is vital.

Within the environment, our children will have access to techniques for e.g. breathing which helps to calm their mind and bodies to reach an optimum state for learning. The aim is to bring children’s awareness/attention to the present moment and in so doing let go of other thoughts that might be scurrying around the mind which distract from focusing on the learning of the lesson.

Diversity

Our children enter school with a secure sense and knowledge of their own identify. We aim to build on this with an emphasis on celebrating their uniqueness. We teach and promote an ethos of valuing and respecting the individuality and cultural differences of all people both locally and globally.

The aim is to support children to feel a strong sense of belonging and community by taking part in whole-school assemblies, end of Puzzle outcomes, displays etc. and to bring the learning alive through Weekly Celebrations to make it lived across the school community and in children’s lives outside of school.