Mental Wellbeing at Shavington Primary School

At Shavington Primary School we know that emotional wellbeing is important to every child’s happiness and success. We support our pupils to build strong relationships, manage challenges, and reach their full potential in a caring, supportive environment. We value each child’s social and emotional development as highly as their academic progress. Through dedicated staff and tailored support like our ELSA provision, we help children develop confidence, resilience, and the skills they need to thrive.

How Do We Support Mental Health in School?

  • We use a whole school approach. It is important that we provide a positive, supportive atmosphere where every child feels safe and valued.
  • We have staff in school who are trained to recognise the signs of mental health difficulties and they can offer support when needed.
  • We provide the children with opportunities to talk about their emotions, to take part in mindfulness activities and engage in physical activities.
  • Children who need extra support in school are given opportunities to have intervention to support with their mental wellbeing.
  • We gain child’s voice by meeting with our student council. During these meetings we listen to the children’s views on wellbeing in school and take feedback to help us to put together the best provision for the school and the children.

How Can Parents and Carers Support Their Child’s Mental Wellbeing?

  • Encouraging your child to talk about how they are feeling.
  • Routine and boundaries are important to help your child to feel safe and supported.
  • Promoting a healthy lifestyle. Encouraging your child to eat well, sleep well and stay active.
  • If you have any concerns around your child’s mental health, please speak with staff in school and we can look at services and support available.

At Shavington Primary School we understand that children sometimes need extra support with their emotional wellbeing. That’s why we have specially trained ELSA staff in our school to provide targeted help when it’s needed most.

What is ELSA?

ELSA stands for Emotional Literacy Support Assistant. Our ELSAs are specially trained members of staff who work with children to help them understand and manage their emotions, develop coping strategies, and build self-esteem.

How Does ELSA Support Work?

  • Individual or small group sessions – Children may work one-to-one or in small groups, depending on their needs.
  • Focus areas – Sessions cover a range of topics, including managing emotions, making friends, coping with loss or change, and building confidence.
  • Safe and supportive – ELSA sessions take place in a safe, quiet space where children can talk openly and feel supported.
  • Collaboration – Our ELSA works closely with class teachers and parents to ensure the best possible support for each child.

When does ELSA happen? 

An ELSA intervention would happen once there had been a period of intervention at classroom level to support emotional literacy or emotional wellbeing (as part of our Ordinarily Available Inclusive Provision). If the intervention carried out by teaching staff did not have the desired impact, after a period of time, the class teacher would discuss this with the school's SENCo to review the intervention and progress. It may be decided at this point that a referral to our in-school ELSAs is needed. At this point, it may also be suggested for a referral to be made into our school's SENCo for a monitoring process to take place. Please see https://shavingtonprimary.co.uk/send for further information regarding the monitoring process. 

What else do I need to know? 

Parents may be asked to complete a questionnaire at the beginning and end of the intervention to feed into the assessment ELSA tool. 

How can I help my child at home? 

Useful Websites 

 

Useful resources 

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Sensing In 

Sensing in encourages us to notice what is happening in our bodies. Here are two different activities to practise sensing in with children and young people:

Personal weather report

We can think of the sensations and emotions arising in our bodies as being like weather systems moving across a landscape. Thinking about our feelings in this way helps us to observe our current state without overly identifying with our emotions: just as we can’t change the weather, we can’t change how we’re feeling, but we can change how we relate to our feelings. Here are some simple instructions to use with children and young people. 

  1. Make sure you’re sitting comfortably with your feet on the ground and your back upright.
  2. Close your eyes if you feel safe to do so and notice what’s going on inside. Spend a minute or so just observing what’s happening inside you.  
  3. Now see if you can summon the weather report that best describes what you notice inside, for example, it might feel sunny, rainy, stormy, still, windy, and so on.  
  4. Open your eyes and share your weather report with a partner/the whole class if you feel happy to do so. 

Body scan

Click to find full instructions and a free audio for this body scan(opens in a new tab). You can either read out the instructions to the children/young people or play the audio. The instructions suggest that the children/young people lie down but if space is an issue, ask them to sit in their chairs and adjust the instructions accordingly.

 

Breathing

Breathing exercises develop children and young people’s awareness of their internal state, as well as building their capacity for physiological regulation and increasing their concentration. Here are some breathing activities suitable for use in the classroom. 

Breathing exercises for children

Breathing Exercises 
https://youtu.be/b2Tbfs7neAk
https://youtu.be/CtYxhIHI9Yc
https://youtu.be/HTy_fogH2v0

Five-finger starfish meditation

  1. Make a starfish with one hand, spreading your fingers out wide. 
  2. Using the forefinger of the other hand, you are going to gently trace the outline of the starfish hand in sync with your breathing. To do this, use your forefinger to trace from the base of the thumb up to the top of the thumb as you breathe in. Then, as you breathe out, trace down the other side of your thumb.  
  3. Continue to trace around the outside of the remaining fingers, breathing in as you trace up a finger and out as you trace down a finger.  
  4. Continue this process for up to five minutes.

Breathing with a buddy

The following exercise is particularly good for younger children who can sometimes find the instruction to “pay attention to the breath”  difficult to follow.

  1. Choose an object or soft toy that you like. This will be your ‘breathing buddy’.  
  2. Lie down on the floor on your back in a comfortable position with your breathing buddy. Place your breathing buddy on your tummy. 
  3. Focus your attention on the rise and fall of your breathing buddy as you breathe in and out.  
  4. Continue this for up to five minutes. 

Mountain breathing

This exercise, young people are encouraged to link their breathing to the shape of their hand. The combination of focusing on the hand and the breath, coupled with soothing touch, usually has a calming effect.

  1. Put up one hand, palm facing out and fingers spread apart, like a mountain range. 
  2. Using the forefinger of the other hand, you are going to gently trace the outline of the mountains in sync with your breathing. To do this, use your forefinger to trace from the base of the thumb up to the top of the thumb as you breathe in. Then, as you breathe out, trace down the other side of your thumb. 
  3. Continue to trace around the outside of the remaining fingers, breathing in as you trace up a finger and out as you trace down a finger. 
  4. Continue this process for up to five minutes.

Breathing with shapes

Using shapes can be helpful for young people who need extra visual guidance. You can either find a moving shape, or use an image of a triangle to help guide the young person’s in-and-out breath.
To do this, find a breathing ‘Gif’. Click here (opens in a new tab) to see some examples. Alternatively, click here (opens in a new tab) for some videos that use visuals and audio to support breathing at different rates (two seconds, three seconds, and so on). Show the young person the moving image and ask them to breathe along with the shape for five minutes.
Alternatively, draw a triangle like the one in the picture. Ask the young person to breathe in, hold their breath for three counts and then breathe out as they trace their finger around the shape. Ask them to continue this for up to five minutes.

 

Stretching

Stretching exercises support children and young people to become more aware of how their bodies feel and move, as well as increasing their flexibility.  Here are some examples of stretching exercises that you can do with children and young people.

Stretching 

Visit the GoNoodle website, which you can access at: https://www.gonoodle.com/ (opens in a new tab). From this website, choose a stretching exercise that you feel will be appropriate to do with the children or young people with whom you are working. 
To access the stretching videos on GoNoodle, you will need to sign up as a user on the home page, which you can do for free. Once you have signed up, click on ‘Categories’ at the top of the page. This will take you to a menu of the different categories of movement videos. Scroll down the page to the ‘Movement type’ category and click on the ‘Stretching’ button. This will take you to a selection of stretching videos suitable for doing with children and young people of different ages. Choose ones that you feel will best suit the needs of your cohorts. 

Yoga

The following videos will give you some ideas of simple yoga sequences that you can do with children and young people. 

https://youtu.be/4Z24hme6AcI

https://youtu.be/nCZzjd6_OHk

https://youtu.be/3Ql411IIpJM