Published on: September 5, 2024
Compass Changing Lives staff organised a day of activities themed around the 5 Ways To Wellbeing, as part of Lady Manners School’s Year 6 Summer School.
The Year 6 Summer School is a 3 day programme of activities for new students who are moving up to Year 7 at Lady Manners School in Bakewell. More specifically, the programme is to welcome new students with special educational needs, or those who are the only student moving up to Lady Manners from their Primary school.
The first 2 days of the Summer School are usually made up of ice breaker and team building activities, to help the children attending get to know each other and feel more confident. The third day is organised by the Derbyshire Dales MHST, which is based in Lady Manners School. This has been the case for the last few years, built in part on Lady Manners School’s role as a Centre of Excellence for Changing Lives.
This year, Changing Lives led students through a series of activities based around the 5 Ways To Wellbeing: Connect, Be Active, Take Notice, Keep Learning and Give. These are 5 evidence-based ways to boost wellbeing and support mental health, developed from research by the New Economics Foundation, that anybody can do as part of their daily life.
The day was organised by Natalie, Supervising Practitioner at Derbyshire Dales MHST, with support from EMHPs Zoe and Jo. To ensure that they could run a full programme of activities, the Derbyshire Dales MHST recruited Mel (Engagement and Equalities Practitioner), Rachel (Participation Practitioner) and Carn (Marketing and Digital Communications Officer) from the Changing Lives Specialist Team.
Changing Lives were also supported by other community organisations. “Connect” was delivered by practitioners from Thrive Social Prescribing, a Derbyshire based wellbeing service that uses Wellbeing Mentors to deliver a holistic approach to young people’s wellbeing needs. “Be Active” was delivered by staff from Bakewell Swimming Pool and Gym, a partnership between the Freedom Leisure non-profit and Derbyshire Dales District Council.
“Connect” was about how building and maintaining positive relationships with others is important for our wellbeing. Thrive practitioners illustrated this with games that helped the children find connections with each other. This included a game where children asked questions while passing around a ball of string. If multiple children gave the same answer, then they tied a loop around their hands before passing it to the others. The result was a spiders web of connections and common ground, a metaphor made literal by string.
“Be Active” was about the health benefits, both physical and mental, of movement and exercise. Courtney and Hailey from Freedom Leisure illustrated this by leading children in games of tennis, badminton and pickleball to get them moving. Children went on to their next activities full of energy, and ready to focus.
“Take Notice” was about observing your surroundings and appreciating the present, mindful practices that are beneficial for mental health. Jo took the children outside, braving the elements, to embrace nature with all their senses. They used their eyes to look at and identify trees, their sense of touch to identify their chosen stick from a collection, and their ears to listen for sounds in the environment like birdsong. Despite rain and wind, children were enthusiastic about exploring the outside and seeing what they could observe.
“Keep Learning” was about the idea that, by learning new skills and developing yourself, you are also supporting your emotional wellbeing. With Zoe and Rachel, children learned techniques to manage stress and worries. They started with a game of Jenga which had questions written on the blocks to help participants get to know each other better. Then the group did a stress bucket activity where they discussed what worries students might have about starting Year 7 in September. Children wrote the worries down on a post-it and put them into a stress bucket. Common worries included getting lost, having to make new friends, getting more homework and rumours about scary teachers.
Next, the “Keep Learning” group talked about how to reduce stress and feel calmer if these worries start to become overwhelming. Zoe and Rachel demonstrated the calming effect of breathing in and taking a long, slow breath out, using bubbles for bubble breathing, which they followed up by teaching some breathing techniques including square breathing and five-finger breathing. Then, children were taught about the benefits of progressive muscle relaxation which helps to relieve built-up tension in the muscles. Children practised isolating different muscle groups, to squeeze the muscles for a count of 10, before relaxing the muscles again to release the tension. Finally, they looked at distraction techniques and used the 5,4,3,2,1 technique, a method of distracting from worries by focusing on the five senses: 5 things you can see, 4 things you can hear, 3 things you can touch, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste.
“Give” was about the real positive effects that acts of kindness and generosity has on your own wellbeing. For this final activity, Mel and Carn led the children in making “pebble pets” and friendship bracelets as gifts they could share with somebody special to them. For the pebble pets, children painted polished stones with characters, scenes or patterns that they imagined. These included rainbows, grassy hills and a lot of ladybirds. For the friendship bracelets, Mel taught them how to braid them out of colourful threads of wool. Because of the relaxing, mindful nature of painting and braiding, children were free to talk about their experiences of the day, their hopes and worries about secondary school, and who they were going to share their gifts with.
By the end of the day, and thus the end of the Summer School, children seemed engaged and excited to move on to Secondary School. Many participants had clearly made new friends, and formed new groups that they would carry into their time at Lady Manners School. Importantly as well, children were now familiar and comfortable with the Changing Lives service at Lady Manners, and many said that they were looking forward to seeing the team again.
Zoe Heathcote, one of the Educational Mental Health Practitioners, said the following when describing the day:
“The day was really good fun, everyone was so supportive of each other and willing to join in. I met some great characters who I look forward to engaging with, should our paths cross again in the future!”
Derby and Derbyshire Mental Health Support , MHSTs , Schools , wellbeing , whole school approach