As with I’m sure every school, a lot of thinking is going in to how we can support our children, staff and families both during this time of national school closures, and also how we continue to provide support when schools re-open. When and in whatever form?
We have discussed how we will ensure the safest possible environment for children and staff, how we will balance the curriculum , how we will re-introduce routines and rules to help everyone begin to feel like a school again.
One key aspect we know we will need to have as a priority for probably a long period of time is positive mental health. A group of staff have been involved in a School Wellbeing project with a number of other schools and the Local Authority Behaviour Support Team, so this has been a focus for us during this year already.
We want to make sure that all our children, and staff, are given the opportunities to share their thoughts, feelings, memories and hopes regarding this turbulent and unprecedented time in all our lives. We make no assumptions, for how could we possibly really know, what anyone else has been through, but will be making a firm commitment to ring fencing significant time daily for Circle Time discussions.
We want the children to be open and to share. But we also want to help, as we would always do as professionals, by trying to provide facts and what reassurance and support we can. So that they know they are being listened to, that others have had similar experiences and that gossip and opinions not based on fact can be unhelpful and worrying.
A few weeks ago I raised the question of Circle Time resources and ideas for conversation starters on Twitter. Many thanks to everyone who responded or showed an interest. There was definitely an interest in me sharing our school’s plans when prepared. So please feel free to use and adapt as best serves your community our Cornerstone circle time pack, by clicking below (downloads a .docx file)
Original article at https://timjumpclarke.wordpress.com/2020/05/10/circle-time-support/
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