PATHS
Our PAThS subject leader is Miss Victoria Green.
We are a PATHS Model school
“Treat others how you want to be treated” PATHS Golden Rule
Look at our amazing progression in PATHs display.
PATHS is a key part of our school curriculum and it stands for
Promoting Alternative THinking Strategies
At Holy Spirit, we actively promote the positive well-being and emotional well-being of our children by incorporating PATHS into our daily life. The programme, which has been developed by Barnardo's, empowers all our children to develop the fundamental social and emotional learning skills, which will enable them to make positive choices throughout life.
PATHS is designed to be taught two or more times per week for a minimum of 20-30 minutes per day. Systematic, developmentally-based lessons, materials, and instructions are provided to facilitate emotional literacy, self-control, social competence, positive peer relations, and interpersonal problem-solving skills. Key objectives in promoting these developmental skills are to prevent and to reduce behavioural and emotional problems.
At the start of every new month, your child will bring home some PATHS homework. We post on our Twitter page about our PATHS / SEL learning in school and we will also post things that you can do with your child too.
The main aims of PATHS
PATHS improves:
Classroom behaviour
Self-esteem
Self-control
Emotional intelligence
Academic Engagement
Conflict Resolution
PATHS reduces:
Emotional distress
Aggressive behaviour
Conduct problems
Occasionally, data is collected from a sample of children to analyse the impact of PATHS across our school. Please see below the PATHS Privacy Statement and our impact report 2021 / 22 and 2022 / 23.
Look at our wonderful PATHs ambassadors.
Children come to school with different personalities, interests and skills. They also come from a range of backgrounds, homes and situations; and they will have experienced a range of factors in their homes and communities that can either lead to poor mental health (risk factors), or alternatively protect them and help them build coping mechanisms and resilience (protective factors). We actively promote the positive well-being and emotional well-being of our children by incorporating PATHS into our daily life. The programme, which has been developed by Barnardo’s, empowers all our children to develop the fundamental social and emotional learning skills, which will enable them to make positive choices throughout life.
WE ARE A PATHS SCHOOL
In 2022, we were excitedly awarded the prestigious SEL Worldwide Model School Award - the first one in St Helens!
We were honoured to be presented with the award by Lisa Best (Our PATHS Coach) and The Worshipful, The Mayor, Councillor Sue Murphy. SEL permeates through our school and we are so very proud to be the first PATHS Model School in St Helens.
We're proud to share with you these videos and photos giving a brief insight into the PATHS curriculum in action throughout our school. We are so proud of how successful PATHS has been in Holy spirit and how wonderfully adaptable the children have been. They are now much more confident in talking about their feelings and emotions rather than demonstrating them through behaviour. EYFS and Year 1 can tell you all about 'doing the turtle' and Y2 upwards can use the three steps for calming down/control signals to help us when we feel uncomfortable.
Homework
You may have noticed that your child is now bringing home PATHS homework once a half term. It's really important that you know what we're learning about and how we deal with our emotions inside school too. The children's effort with their homework has been outstanding and I am so proud of them; it's not always easy to label or talk about our feelings and emotions, but together we can do it! It's been great to see you engaging on Twitter with us and wonderful to know that you too see the importance of our PATHS learning. Ask your child what they've learnt in PATHS this week...
How can you help your child?
It would be great if you could use the same techniques with your children, at home. This would further help them to regulate their feelings and be hugely beneficial to them. Consistency is key...
See below for information about how you child is encouraged to deal with their uncomfortable feelings.
BBuddies
Our BBuddies are an amazing bunch of children who encourage everyone to follow the fair play rules, have fun and include everyone at play times! They go out of their way to be kind to others and to help others feel more comfortable.
Our coach met with the children, in Year 4 who wanted to be a BBuddy, and delivered training to them. They were trained to help teach children new games and to problem solve using the PATHS strategies. They learnt:
- what characteristics they need to be a BBuddy
- games to play on the playground and during wet play
- how to look out for children who are lonely or hurt, and
- what to do to help.
If your child is a BBuddy, be sure to ask them how they help other children to feel happier and more included on our playground (proud parent moment!).
Parental Sessions
We were excited to welcome parents to another one of our PATHS Parental Information Sessions. Thank you to all the parents / carers who came – it was lovely to see so many smiley faces! Lisa (Our PATHS Coach) and Miss Green were able to share the PATHS programme that we use at Holy Spirit. We explored what PATHS is and why we use it, how we use it, the benefits of it, plus how you can help at home too.
Top Tips for using PATHS at home:
- Take an interest in your child being Pupil of the Day – give them a compliment too.
- Model complimenting at home.
- Encourage you child to share their feelings – remember all feelings are okay.
- Differentiate between feelings and behaviour.
- Encourage the use of Turtle or the 3 steps for calming down.
- Compliment your child for self-regulating their feelings.
- Model problem solving so they can see the process for themselves.
- Play games which encourage teamwork and cooperation
- Remember the Golden Rule – Treat others how you want to be treated.
It was wonderful to receive such positive feedback from you all and to hear that you will make use of PATHS too. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any further queries.
OUR PATHS GALLERY
PATHS and SEL After-school Club
We really enjoy our after-school club. We explore PATHS through discussions, art, role play, puppets and programme resources. Check out Year 1 and our PATHS/SEL after-school club showing us how to 'do the turtle'...
Rainforest Camp Award
As a school, we innately promote social and emotional learning as we know that we can face some tricky times in our lives. During lockdown, alongside the school as a whole, the Rainforest Camp (our nurture room) posted daily SEL activities for all our children to access to help them recognise and manage their emotions and to be thankful of others. PATHS and Barnardo's recognised our school's work and gave us a Superstar Award for truly making a difference.
World Mental Health Day - we listened to the poem 'The crayon that talked' and discussed how the world would be if we were all the same too! Scan our QR code to listen to us recite it...
Happy National Compliment Day
As a PATHS Model School, compliments are part of our every day routine - we all love to be Pupil of the Day!
Today our staff and governors were happy to celebrate all of our wonderful children at Holy Spirit!
Our children are always happy to give each other a compliment too!
Happy World Smile Day! We always work super hard to make others smile and to treat others the way we want to be treated. Rainforest made these smiley, emoji squishy toys in their nurture group to celebrate World Smile Day. Look at their smiles!
Be Kind - Treat others how you want to be treated
World Kindness Day - Be the 'I' in kind by spreading kind words and actions.
What have we learned in PATHS?
Reception, Year 1 and Year 2
Year 3 and Year 4
Year 5 and Year 6
International Day of Happiness
Holy Spirit is a happy school! Look at our wonderful smiles to share our happiness with you..
Rainforest talked about feeling happy and what makes them happy. We also thought about how we can make others happy and how that would feel too. We thought about things that would make us happy and created some posters.
International SEL Day
As a proud PATHS SEL Model School, we celebrated International SEL Day. The children were fantastic at complimenting themselves and others, showing kindness, treating people with respect, showing great sportsmanship plus much more! We are in awe of how our children respond to Social and Emotional Learning at Holy Spirit.
Our PATHS Kindness Advent Calendar
As a PATHS Model School we are always thinking of ways to share our amazing SEL work throughout our school. We are so proud of our new whole-school kindness display, which is filled with a compliment for each and every child and staff member in our wonderful school.
EYFS were amazing at showing and telling us how Twiggle and friends join in their learning in the provision and help them!
Just like Twiggle, EYFS do what friends do. They play, they help and they share!
