The importance of self-esteem
The recently published white paper Healthy lives, healthy people makes specific reference to strengthening pupils' self-esteem, confidence and personal responsibility: "Good schools will be active promoters of health in childhood and adolescence, because healthy children with high self-esteem learn and behave better at school…"
Teachers have long known that children with good self-esteem are better at managing their emotions and calming themselves down. Such children also display more empathy and understanding of other people and therefore tend to form good relationships and, critically for schools, they perform better academically than those with poor self-esteem.
Short programme: self-esteem
With this in mind, we've developed a short programme focussing on self-esteem. It contains plans and ideas for at least six sessions which can be delivered as part of the curriculum over half of a term, for example, or as intensive intervention work with selected groups. Some schools have chosen to extend their work and there is plenty of material in the resource to allow for this. The resource includes assessment tools and structured, sequential sessions to explore and develop self-esteem, together with templates and a selection of ideas for activities. It also makes refererence to further support materials which you can borrow from us.
Outline of the resource
The resource covers
- assessing pupils' self-esteem
- being unique and what makes me special
- what makes me feel good, achievements and recognition
- positive relationships, empathy and the attributes of a good friend
- reframing negative thoughts
- plenary session to reflect and ideas for a personal reminder of the programme.
It contains suggestions for ways to share pupils' work in displays if you wish to do this. (In some of the trial schools the children felt that they wanted to keep their work within a secure group or as a personal reminder.)
If you'd like to use this resource in your school, contact us.
Healthy Schools Plus
This short programme forms an ideal basis for a Healthy Schools Plus project on emotional health and wellbeing and contains suitable assessment tools that give you the valuable evidence of the impact of your work that you need for your reporting, read more about Plan, Do, Review for Healthy Schools Plus.
