Our bespoke curriculum:

'Keeping Ourselves Happy, Healthy and Safe.' 

Personal, Social and Emotional Development (PSED) is the key building blocks of healthy, respectful relationships, focusing on family and friendships, in all contexts, including online. This will sit alongside the essential understanding of how to be healthy. Teaching about mental wellbeing is central to these subjects, especially as a priority for parents is their children’s happiness.

PSED supports and foster children’ wellbeing and develops resilience and character that we know are fundamental to children being happy, successful, and productive members of society. Central to this is children ‘ability to believe that they can achieve goals, both academic and personal; to stick to tasks that will help them achieve those goals, even when the reward may be distant or uncertain; and to recover from knocks and challenging periods in their lives. This should be complemented by development of personal attributes including kindness, integrity, generosity, and honesty. PSED represent a huge opportunity to help our children  develop. The knowledge and attributes gained will support their own, and others’, wellbeing and attainment and help young people to become successful and happy adults who make a meaningful contribution to society.

Curriculum Intent

We believe each child should be valued and understood as an individual; academically, socially, emotionally and as a spiritual being.  

Our curriculum aims to help children to understand how they are developing personally and socially, and tackles many of the moral, social and cultural issues that are part of growing up.

Through our curriculum children will have opportunities to get to know and value who they are. They will learn how to relate to other people in this ever-changing world and to develop positive relationships with themselves and others. They will also appreciate what it means to be a member of a diverse society and to understand that they have rights and responsibilities.

Implementation

We utilise a number of teaching materials and resources such as a PSED and wellbeing programme called Jigsaw. This is a progressive, and effective scheme of work which has a strong emphasis on emotional literacy, building resilience and nurturing mental and physical health. Jigsaw lessons also include mindfulness allowing children to advance their emotional awareness, concentration, and focus.

We teach children to be accepting of each other, which gives a sense of belonging to any child who feels different and helps them to know it’s okay to be themselves. It’s also important for children to learn that families come in different shapes and sizes, we promote the 'Different Families, Same Love' throughout nursery. 

Substantive and disciplinary knowledge in PSHEE

Substantive knowledge in PSHE is underpinned by 6 key concepts:

1. Being me in my world: Includes understanding my place in nursery, 
2. Celebrating difference: Includes anti-bullying (cyber and homophobic bullying included) and diversity work.
3. Dreams and goals: Includes goal setting, aspirations for yourself and the world and working together.
4. Healthy me: Development of self-esteem, and confidence as well as healthy lifestyle choices.
5. Relationships: Includes understanding friendship, family and other relationships, conflict resolution and communication skills.
6. Changing me: Coping positively with change.

HE lesson is underpinned by the following 6 disciplinary knowledge concepts:

1. Connect us: Developing the ability to take enjoyment from their learning, to be inclusive learners and to build and maximise social skills. Children are encouraged to build positive relationships and take part in collaborative learning.
2. Calm me: Children gain awareness of the activity in their minds, relaxing them and quietening their thoughts and emotions to a place of optimum learning capacity.
3. Open my mind: Developing the ability to filter the many stimuli entering the child’s mind at any given time. The aim here is to improve concentration and learning by filtering out activity around them.
4. Tell me or show me: Children are encouraged to introduce new information, concepts and skills, using a range of approaches and activities.
5. Let me learn: Developing children’s ability to manipulate, use and play with new information in order for it to make sense to them and for them to ‘accommodate’ it into their existing learning.
6. Help me reflect: Children are encouraged to reflect on their learning experiences and their progress. By reflecting, children can process and evaluate what they have learnt, which enables them to consolidate and apply their learning.

PSHE, SMSC and British Values Statement

Our bespoke curriculum 'Keeping Ourselves Happy, Healthy and Safe' comprises not just of PSED (Personal, Social, and Emotional Development) but also includes resilience, mental health, emotional literacy, social and employability skills, British values, and SMSC (spiritual, moral, social, cultural development), as well as an inclusive philosophy.