PSHE Curriculum Statement
“Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -Benjamin Franklin
Pupils learn best in PSHE when the subject area is relevant to them. We use active, inclusive, needs led and inspiring lessons to teach PSHE. Learning is led through the scheme ‘You, me and PSHE’ and a clearly planned series of school wide topic areas. These are underpinned by the development of knowledge, attributes, attitudes and skills.
Personal Social Health Economic education at Grange Farm
At Grange Farm, we believe that PSHE is an all day every day subject. It underpins our whole school ethos and is embedded in everything we do as a class and as a whole school.
We study eight key areas in PSHE lessons:
Physical health and well being – including healthy eating and prevention of illnesses
Keeping safe and managing risk – including online safety
Identity, society and equality
Drug, alcohol and tobacco education
Mental health and well being
Financial capability and well being
Basic first aid
Relationships and Sex education – including changing adolescent bodies
Our whole school ethos covers personal attributes which we discuss regularly and reward explicitly – for example verbally, by giving ethos tokens and in celebration assemblies. It is these attributes which make our children who they are and the adults they become.
Our PSHE lessons are needs led for the children we are teaching. Our planned curriculum is a spiral curriculum to allow children to revisit different areas and recap ideas on a frequent basis. Each area taught has a pre assessment – to see what the children already know – and a post assessment to see what the children have learnt. Each unit of work provides the children with real life experiences. For example, saying no to a cigarette, this is something that they may have to do. They may need to draw upon several strategies: avoidance, distraction, perseverance, strength.
Each unit covered must have parts for children to learn skills, knowledge and personal attributes.
A good PSHE lesson in our school is: inclusive, active, needs led, thinking is challenged, inspiring.
Coaching
Coaching takes place every week. It is a valuable time where the children are allocated small groups led by the different adults across school. This allows the children to have another trusted adult in their lives. The groups stay constant each week and over the years. As the children transition from one year group to the next, their group loses the older children who move to high school and gain younger children who move into the phase.
Each week the groups have a stimulus (video clip, question, piece of text, photograph) and discuss it in the secure setting of their group. This helps to embed our Social Emotional Areas of Learning as well as improve the children’s confidence spoken language and questioning skills. This is an incredibly positive and thoroughly enjoyable time of the week for all!