Thrive
For everyone at Maple Cross JMI and Nursery School, our first priority is to care for each and every child in a secure and safe environment enabling them to skip into school and leap into life.
As part of our role, we support children’s emotional and social learning throughout their time at school. We do this during learning, whole school assemblies, break times and through activities such as music, sport and a wide range of trips, visitors and experiences. We also use the Thrive Approach across school to help support pupils.
What is the Thrive Approach?
Children cannot always put their needs into words, but the way children behave can tell us a lot about how they are feeling.
The Thrive Approach draws on the latest research – from current neuroscience, recent attachment research, current studies of effective learning and current models of child development – in order to help the school to understand the needs being signalled by children’s behaviour. It gives us targeted strategies and activities to help them re-engage with learning and life.
Why do we need Thrive?
Unfortunately, like all of us at some point in our lives, children may face challenges that knock them off course. What is needed then is understanding and support to get them back on track. Many children will respond to the care, understanding and support given by parents, family, friends and teachers. However, some children need a little bit extra.
What extra support can we offer?
Children who need a little bit of extra help are identified through our whole-class screening process, by class teachers, or through communication with families or outside agencies. For some children there may be an obvious reason why they need a bit of extra support. This might be bereavement, family break down or an identified medical condition such as ADHD. For others, there can be no obvious trigger to why they are finding some aspects of school and/or home-life difficult.
Working closely with parents and class teachers, our Licensed Thrive Practitioner, Ms Bone will carry out full assessments to identify children’s social, emotional and behavioural needs. This helps us to build a bespoke Thrive Action Plan of activities to support their needs.
What is a Thrive Action Plan?
A Thrive Action Plan is a plan of activities tailored to support a child’s identified social and emotional learning targets. The activities are one-to-one and small group relational, play and arts- based activities designed to help the child feel better about him/herself; become more resilient and resourceful; form trusting, rewarding relationships; be compassionate and empathetic; and/or be able to overcome difficulties and setbacks. They might include playing in the sand, puppets, cooking, painting, model making, exploring difficult situations through role-play or comic strips, playing strategy games or projects focusing on the child’s own interests.
Action Plans are shared with parents and they are encouraged to do some of the activities at home if possible. They are reviewed regularly to see the progress children have made.
So who gets Thrive?
Our whole school ethos mirrors the THRIVE approach and we work with our PSHE approach, Heart Smart to teach children how to recognise their feelings and emotions. More information about Heart Smart can be found here.
What makes Maple Cross School a Thrive school?
At Maple Cross we don’t consider Thrive to be an intervention for just a few children, we consider it to be a whole-school approach. We all believe that all behaviour is communication and that communication needs to be understood and supported – not “dealt” with. Thrive feeds into everything we do; tea with Mrs T, getting to know everyone and their families including home visits, sharing achievements not just academic ones, celebrating our diversity and our collective ethos.
If you want to know more about Thrive, do visit the Thrive Approach website, or speak to one of our licensed practitioners;
- Katy Stickley
- Jodi Dorsett
- Sarah Duce
Family Thrive
At Maple Cross Primary school we are starting a course for Parents and Carers. It is a six week course that introduces you to the fundamentals of Thrive and how it works in practice.
On the course you will find out about:
- The Thrive approach
- How our brains develop
- How your right brain talks to your left brain!
- Why play and creativity are so important to you and your child
- How to support your child at times of change and difficulty
- Everyday triggers and how to keep calm
- How to be a behaviour detective