Pastoral Care

We believe that to nurture the whole child enables them to thrive and flourish in their education and for life. Pastoral care is the name we give to all the other stuff we do to look after children’s well-being; whether that is emotional, physical or spiritual.

 

Emotional Nurturing

We have a trained Teaching Partner, Mrs Shuttleworth, who runs nurture groups to support children’s emotional wellbeing.

She runs regular ‘Happy to be Me’ programmes. This  6 session programme is aimed at children (ages 6 – 11 years) who may be experiencing low self-esteem, lack of confidence, attachment problems and/or feeling insecure.  However, it is also a valuable programme for children with healthy self-esteem to learn essential ‘self-esteem maintenance’ tools that they will be able to draw upon for their lifetime.

She responds to referrals made by class teachers to provide additional support for a child. She is available throughout the school day to engage with children in supporting them with challenging circumstances that they may be facing either at school or at home. These can vary considerably from friendship problems to bereavement; transition in and out of school to house and school moves; being equipped with appropriate social skills to self-esteem building.

Other pastoral support programmes we can deliver include R.E.S.T (Resilience and Engagement Scale and Toolkit linked to our Jigsaw PHSE programme).

Why use R.E.S.T?

At Jigsaw PSHE, we are passionate about improving the mental health, emotional literacy and resilience of children,
believing that this underpins the capacity to learn and equips children to manage life now and in their futures. So, it
was an easy decision to work with Malcolm McKinlay, the Headteacher at Parkgate House School, knowing that the 10
descriptors of the scale he developed would provide a means of gauging children’s resilience, and Jigsaw resources could
then provide appropriate learning activities to support the development of each of the 10 descriptors.
Schools are about teaching and learning, but in order for children to learn effectively, they have to provide the most fertile
learning environment. Externally this includes the facilities, buildings, ethos, staff, community , all of which come together
to form a ‘cradle’ (think ‘cradle’ that holds a boat whilst being built or repaired) to hold each child securely as they learn,
grow and develop.
Schools also know they need to nurture the ‘internal’ learning environment within each child. This ‘internal’ environment
includes the ‘internal working model’ through which each child experiences their world, emotional states, self-esteem,
social skills, thought processes and self-awareness. When these are present, positive and healthy learning happens more
effectively; hence Jigsaw PSHE includes mindfulness philosophy and practice in order to develop this internal learning
environment in each child.
We believe resilience, the ability to bounce back, see failure as opportunity to learn, and cope with adversity, is integral to
this internal learning environment and could be seen as the manifestation or result of a number of the personal aspects
listed above.
Therefore, producing the Jigsaw Resilience and Engagement Scale offers a straightforward, time-effective way to
determine each child’s given starting point, and thereby indicate what they may need in order to build all 10 aspects of
resilience, improving their internal learning environment and empowering them to sustain this

 

Healthy Eating

We have a developed a whole school food policy in response to the growing national concerns about children’s health and wellbeing linked to their diet. In 2016 we overhauled our food provisions for our Breakfast and After School Club, removing high sugar content foods and introducing more wholesome alternatives -replacing squash with milk or water and jam with savoury spreads.

Our school meals provider is ‘The School Lunch Company’.  All of our school meals are freshly prepared, healthy and nutritionally balanced – and also very popular with our children!

We are not only committed to providing healthy foods ourselves and educating our children about healthy eating; we wish to support our parents and carers with promoting healthy eating at home. We have run several parent workshops linked to healthy eating and oral health alongside the Community Dental Services welcome opportunities to run information events for our families.

 

Being Active

We have a great range of physical after school activities available to our children on top of our PE Curriculum. Our break and lunchtimes have sporting activities available to children as well as their free play – with ball games being held in our dedicated ball area inside a SMOOGA, skipping activities, hula-hoops and other fun fitness play.

As part of the Burford Partnership our school takes part in sporting tournaments and festivals. The tournament provides our children the opportunity to compete against other schools and the whole year group festivals mean that all pupils have the chance to try something new.

The whole school has taken part in many fundraising fitness challenges for charities, including our race-for-life in aid of Cancer Research UK and skip-a-thons for the British Heart Foundation.