Primary Wellbeing Magazine 2021/2022 - For Parents

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Issue 1: January 2022

RATIONALE Why have we created this new resource?

As we are all aware, a focus on student wellbeing is essential for children to be able to thrive within their school environment rather than merely survive. Emotional Health and Wellbeing (EHW) is key for our children being happy, settled and ready to learn.

Whilst student wellbeing is high on the British Government’s agenda for schools in the UK, at BSAK we have always known how important student wellbeing is, never more so that after that last two years of disruption that we have all experienced.

With this in mind, we have created this Wellbeing Magazine for Parents in which we plan: ● To shine a light on what we do at BSAK ● To highlight new initiatives we are introducing and the impact they are having ● To share resources/information to support you at home with your child’s wellbeing.

We wanted to have this information in one place (this magazine) for you to be able to easily access on the parent portal.

MESSAGE FROM ASSISTANT HEAD OF WELLBEING AND PASTORAL CARE NURSERY-YEAR 6 When I first started in my wellbeing role (September 2020) I would regularly look up different definitions of Wellbeing, trying to find one that was meaningful, easy to remember and appropriate to BSAK. It wasn’t long before I came to realisation that we did not want to use other people’s ideas and in order to define what wellbeing is at BSAK we needed to consult BSAK. Sam Walter swalter@britishschool.sch.ae

Early last year, Primary and Secondary SLT worked closely together and commenced this process by asking all our staff the same questions about what wellbeing is and what we would like it to be for our school. From the feedback received we were able to identify 5 key areas with 3 elements in each and this helped create a whole school understanding of what we want student wellbeing to look like for us. We shared these initials areas and elements with student and parent focus groups and with the governors last term.

OUR WELLBEING WHEEL We are delighted to now be able to launch and share with you our Wellbeing Wheel of what Wellbeing at BSAK is.

The process of consulting, receiving and responding to feedback has taken time. The work that has gone into creating this Wellbeing Wheel has been a whole school effort. The real hard work comes now with bringing Wellbeing is… to life for our children, our staff and you, our parents.

Embedding these 5 areas, so that we live and breathe them is the aim.

For more details about each of the areas, please watch our Primary Student leadership team explain.

RELATIONSHIPS FOCUS FOR TERM 2 This term we launch our Wellbeing wheel to our Primary children in an age appropriate way for each of our year groups. Having made all our children aware of the 5 key areas, as a whole Primary school we are going to initially focus on Relationships -

Kindness, Respect and Support.

INTRODUCING OUR PASTORAL AND WELLBEING TEAM As always your first port of call if you have any concerns about your child’s wellbeing, contact your class teacher. They will initially see what they can put in place within the classroom to help support your child. The next stage is that help and support will be offered at year group level. If neither of these levels of intervention have had the required impact the concerns will be raised to Assistant Head level where in consultation with Learning Support and the School Counsellor, we will work out the next best course of action.

Elaine Rawlings Head of Primary

Briony Emery Head of Primary Learning Support Nursery - Year 6

Ellie Edgar Deputy Head Teaching, Learning & Care

Scharlene Sheepers School Counselor Nursery - Year 13

Sam Walter Assistant Head Wellbeing & Pastoral Care

Emma Waters Head of BSAK Nursing Department

SPOTLIGHT ON NEURODIVERSITY

Briony Emery bemery@britishschool.sch.ae

Last term BSAK celebrated Dyslexia Awareness Week and Odd Socks Day; both excellent examples of how we, as a community, recognise differences in how we learn, process and behave. These neurological differences in the human brain are often described by the umbrella term neurodiversity. Humans have neural pathways that are either neurotypical or neurodiverse.

Some examples of neurodiversity (Applied, Clinical and Acquired) within our BSAK community include dyslexia, dyscalculia, ADHD, autism and mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression.

Within our school we support our neurodiverse learners to succeed and thrive in inclusive classrooms and we adopt a strengths-based model of support which recognises that a neurodivergent student has differences not deficits.

The scientific research of our brains and the language used to describe it is changing at a fast pace and is not without controversy! Our Primary Learning Support department keep abreast of current thinking in this area and are passionate about promoting neurodiversity in positive terms.

We would love to engage with parents who might describe themselves or their children as neurodiverse. There is so much to be learnt from within our community so please get in touch with a member of our team and let’s get the neurodiversity conversation started!

ISSUE 2

Issue 2: March 2022

RELATIONSHIPS BELONGING MESSAGE FROM ASSISTANT HEAD OF WELLBEING AND PASTORAL CARE NURSERY-YEAR 6 Sam Walter swalter@britishschool.sch.ae

Welcome back to Issue 2 of our Primary Wellbeing Magazine for Parents. As we continue to focus on the relationships part of our BSAK Wellbeing Wheel - here are some thoughts on belonging.

WATCH: WELLBEING AT BSAK - SAM WALTER

DIVORCED AND SEPARATED PARENTS As a school we are constantly striving to respond to your feedback and make improvements to our policies and procedures, where possible We all know how important effective communication is. With our current focus on relationships, Senior Leadership are in the process of writing a new policy for divorced and separated parents. We feel this is an important step, so that we can ensure as a school we are communicating with the you in the most appropriate and effective way.

Whilst we appreciate this is a sensitive subject, and information you share with us is confidential, having accurate and up to date information on our system, will ensure the smooth running of communication between us the school and you the parents.

If your circumstances and or marital status have changed please inform our admission team via email: kcollings@britishschool.sch.ae

PETER JONES ONLINE SAFETY As part of our ongoing focus on digital wellbeing and trying to be proactive, we have recently revisited our Responsible Us unit of work with our Year 6 children. Timely reminders for both the children and parents include: ●

Peter Jones pjones@britishschool.sch.ae

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the need to keep passwords safe and not share with friends, to avoid people posting on others behalf age limits for social media apps such as Tik Tok being 13 the need to be kind online and failure to do so having consequences as our digital footprint is traceable

There have been many ways that the use of technology has enabled us to continue to interact over these tricky times, and it has also enabled us to enhance our learning experiences while in and out of the classroom. However, it is of course important to take time away from screens and engage in some other activities that can aid our own mental wellbeing, such as reading, playing football or running. It is also important that when we are using technology, we do so in a responsible way.

At the start of the year Mr Jones sent out some presentations to pupils and parents as a reminder of our expectations, tailored to the year groups. They can be found on the parent portal along with a responsible digital use form to submit. Please take some time to discuss these with your child and if you haven't already, submit the responsible digital use form on the portal.

Scan for more information -

Y1 & Y2

Scan for more information -

Y3 & Y4

Scan for more information -

Y5 & Y6

CLASSING -IMPORTANT Still on the theme of relationships, maintaining old ones and making new ones, the process of classing our children is fast approaching. In recent years, we have looked at keeping classes the same/similar, especially with all the disruptions that have been caused by COVID and we will look to do the same this year too.

We do however look at moving classes around at key transition points: Reception moving into Year 1, Year 2 moving into Year 3, Year 6 moving into Year 7. We may also move children to address imbalances that may occur within certain individual classes due to leavers or lots of new arrivals.

Classing is an incredibly complex jigsaw puzzle, where we are juggling a number of factors, such as girl/boy ratio, Arabic A and B, social and emotional need, learning needs, personalities, previous conflicts or long established friendships. The process from start to finish takes between 6-8 weeks to complete and involves the whole teaching staff. Receiving last minute requests from parents, places enormous pressure on the teams and unfortunately can often not be accommodated.

If you have a genuine concern about your child’s classing for next year, please communicate this directly to swalter@britishschool.sch.ae , ccing your child’s class teacher in by Monday 18th April 2022. There is no guarantee that concerns will be addressed, but we will do what we can.

Communications after the above date, will not be able to be accommodated.

ONE STOP SHOP WELLBEING RESOURCES As part of our ongoing staff training on emotional health and wellbeing, we have created a One Stop Shop Wellbeing Resource. This is one location, where we have verified and collated an A-Z of different wellbeing resources including: training videos, articles, online courses and webinars, podcasts and websites that cover a range of topics from ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences) to Relationships.

The positive feedback received from staff on how useful it is to have relevant, up to date information in one easy access place has been brilliant. With this in mind, we have created a similar whole school (Primary and Secondary) resource for parents. (As this is whole school resource, you will see some topics included which are aimed specifically for Secondary parents.)

Please scan the QR code to have a look at our colour coded , easy access PADLET. Make sure you scroll down each area of wellbeing as there are a number of resources under each heading.

This isn’t the finished article and will be added to and updated throughout the year, when we find additional useful information. We invite your feedback on topics you would like covered. If you have any suggestions from the Primary School perspective please contact me on swalter@britishschool.sch.ae

CURRENT WORLD EVENT We are all aware of the sad events which are currently taking place in Eastern Europe, and this of course is just one difficult situation of many across the world. At BSAK, a school of over 50 different nationalities, we pride ourselves on being a community and making sure everyone feels welcome, safe and comfortable here. We know that some members of our community will have very close personal ties to events which might feel a long way from many of us.

If your child is having difficulties processing what is going on at the moment - here are 2 resources which may be of help.

ADVICE IF YOU ARE UPSET BY THE NEWS TIPS TO LOOK AFTER YOUR MENTAL HEALTH DURING SCARY WORLD EVENTS | MENTAL HEALTH FOUNDATION

GL PASS

(PUPILS ATTITUDES TO SCHOOL AND SELF) You may recall that last year, if your child was in (Year 1 - Year 6) they took part in an annual survey called GL PASS, which helps us monitor how our children feel about school and how school makes them feel about themselves.

The data has been used to help us identify general trends across the school and inform the strategies and procedures that we are now putting in place to further enhance our children’s wellbeing. One area that we have chosen to focus on is Learner Self Regard/Self Worth. Self regard means how effective our children feel about their long term ability to achieve academically.

LEARNER SELF - REGARD Learner self regard is easy to spot on the outside. Children with high self regard are often confident and engaged in learning, they contribute to class discussions, they have a growth mindset and are able to make mistakes. They demonstrate positive social behaviours, willingly try new things and often possess strong leadership qualities.

On the inside, children with high self worth are able to regulate their emotions, feel positive and enjoy learning/challenges, are less likely to experience anxiety and when they are anxious, stressed or unhappy they are able to acknowledge this feeling and, accept and regulate their emotions.

To help ensure that as many of our children as possible have a positive outlook on how well they are and can achieve at school in the future, we have asked teachers to choose from a range of possible interventions to further boost this area of wellbeing within their classes.

Possible suggestions include: focusing on praising the good, giving specific feedback, feeding forward, asking hinge questions, allowing more thinking time before calling on children to answer, giving effective praise and tracking small wins.

We feel that given the disruptions of the last two years, looking at boosting learner self regard, will really impact positively on all our Primary children.

SNACK AND CHAT GROUPS Due to our Term 2 return to school being distance learning and then the number of COVID cases within the school community being high, we have not yet been able to set up our Snack and Chat groups in the Primary School yet.

As things start to stabilise after the half term break, we will look to introduce this initiative as we move into Term 3 and we will feedback in our next Wellbeing Magazine for Parents Issue.

LEARNING SUPPORT UNIFIED ROBOTICS 2022 SPREADING THE WORD ABOUT INCLUSION

Briony Emery bemery@britishschool.sch.ae

BSAK is delighted to be competing in this year's Unified Robotics event. Our amazing BSAK Coding Experts - a team of unified athletes and partners - are busy learning how to code in preparation for the first round of competitions next month. The aim of this Special Olympics project is to spread the word about Inclusion, both in our BSAK community and beyond.

This video represents an important component of the event called Fans In The Stands. It is a Whole School Engagement project and will be shared and celebrated within our BSAK community and far and wide on social media platforms. Please join us in wishing Good Luck to the BSAK Coding Experts: Oliver, Seb, Ethan and William!

ISSUE 3

Issue 3: May 2022

LAST BUT NOT LEAST ISSUE 3 Sam Walter

swalter@britishschool.sch.ae

This is our last issue of our Primary Wellbeing Magazine for Parents for this academic year 2021-22. Feedback received, has been extremely positive saying that the resource has proved useful in highlighting what we are focussing on to support and promote wellbeing in school as well as signposting a variety of different wellbeing resources.

TRANSITION AND CHANGE: This last half term is always action packed, continuing with our curriculum as well as looking forward to the changes of next year. Transition and change is a time of excitement but can also be a time of anxiety and worry of the unknown.

Change is a normal part of life and can provide opportunities for our children to develop their resilience and form new relationships. We know however, that if a child struggles with a transition it can have a negative impact on their wellbeing and academic achievement and this is why we plan and prepare for change, for the moves to new classes/year groups thoroughly at BSAK to help build self confidence and boost self-esteem.

We have connected with you, our parent body, to share any concerns you may have for classing next year and this will help teachers proactively plan accordingly. Our wellbeing concerns process, which has now been in place for two years, enables us to know exactly who our most vulnerable children are and help place them accordingly.

As part of the transition process all relevant information gets passed on to new teachers and adults working with your child. Our children will have an opportunity to meet their new teachers for a morning in June and then in September, all staff will continually check in with the children in their new year classes, see how they are coping academically, keep an eye on how they are socialising, making sure they are establishing new friendships and this gets fed back to you in our first parents evening of the academic year.

New parents are welcomed into our community through Year Group Link Parents and as part of our commitment to helping new children settle quickly and feel like they belong to our BSAK community, teachers Zoom call all new parents for 15-20 minutes to have an indepth getting to know your child conversation.

YEAR 6 - YEAR 7 TRANSITION One of the biggest transitions is for our Year 6 children moving on to Secondary school; a new building, new uniform, new routines, a new set of teachers and different expectations. With this in mind, we are delighted to announce that our excellent Primary-Secondary transition process is back up and running this year with a full face to face, immersive 5 day experience. More details to follow from Nic Cooper (Assistant Head Secondary School).

MESSAGE FROM DEPUTY HEAD DESIGNATED SAFEGUARD LEAD

Ellie Edgar eedgar@britishschool.sch.ae

Safeguarding at BSAK is of paramount importance. Last month I was privileged to attend the Child Safeguarding Conference held in Dubai.

The main focus was how to keep our children safe in the digital world.

There were many prolific speakers who are experts in this field. It was reassuring to know that this has been a particular focus for us at BSAK recently, especially with the dawn of Distance Learning. Mr Jones, our Digital Leader shared some practical advice and tips on how you can support your child to be safe online in issue 2 of this magazine.

One of the main takeaways for me after attending the conference, was the importance of highlighting the role of the Safeguarding Leads (DSL) with parents, ensuring we are known and visible.

There are many ways in which we are ALL responsible for the health, safety and wellbeing of each and every child in our care.

Our school safeguards children by: ● ●

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creating a safe environment for children and young people through robust safeguarding practices ensuring that adults who work in the school, including volunteers, don’t pose a risk to children (We employ safer recruitment practices, including police checks) making sure staff are trained, know how to respond to concerns and keep-up-to-date with policy and practice teaching children and young people about staying safe maintaining an environment where children feel confident to approach any member of staff if they have a worry or problem.

You can find our Safeguarding and child protection policy on the Parent Portal under: School Information - School Documents - School Policies.

If you have any further questions or queries, please do not hesitate to contact me directly.

INCLUSION AUTISM AWARENESS MONTH April is Autism Awareness Month. At BSAK we enjoyed 3 inclusive events that enabled our neurodiverse and neurotypical staff and families to work together to offer meaningful and inclusive training and leadership opportunities.

Briony Emery

Staff from our primary Learning Support department and parents joined in the ‘Move to Include’ walk on Hudayriat Island. With over 800 families and community members involved it was the largest inclusion event in Abu Dhabi to date!

bemery@britishschool.sch.ae

Teachers shared videos and resources with their classes to explain autism and how it might feel for some people.

Finally, our Unified Leaders club worked together with some of our autistic students to run a Cake Giveaway event. In exchange for a cake (made by our wonderful LS department) staff were invited to scan a QR code which took them to a bank of resources, top tips, books, articles and videos about autism.

STUDENT VOICE We have 9 key areas to our 5 Year Strategic Wellbeing Plan. Student Voice covers six key goals that allow our children to be both seen and heard. Within our plan we want to: ● ● ● ● ● ●

Involve our children in decision-making about our school.

Involve our children in reflecting about their sense of belonging in the school and contributing to decision making.

Involve our children in setting targets and reviewing their own progress, enabling growing independence within school.

Ensure that more vulnerable children have the opportunity to be heard.

Ensure that the outcomes decided are representative of a range of diverse students.

Engage our children to be responsible for feeding back outcomes and having a level of ownership.

PRIMARY STUDENT LEADERSHIP Our Primary Student Leadership team has had a busy year working to ensure that our student voice is heard and to effect positive change at BSAK. As COVID restrictions are beginning to lift and social distancing is no longer required, our current student leaders highlighted that the children in KS2 would like more equipment on the playground. In our regular meetings our student leaders came up with a list of desired equipment that all children would like to play with. The student leaders are now working hard in council meetings to create ‘instruction cards’ to support our students with using the new equipment and games.

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“It’s amazing for the children to have lots to play with during playtimes. It encourages us to look after the equipment and it will be great for everyone’s well-being as we can all play and have fun together.”

Celina Al-Samarrae Primary Head Girl

Issue 3: May 2022

Our Student Leaders making instruction cards for the playground equipment.

Our Student Leaders in Year 2 and 3 making thank you cards for our Support Workers.

Another example of student leader’s suggestions and ideas being put into action is our recent Eid gift for our BSAK Support Workers.

We are delighted to see that our Student Leaders are using their position to support the well-being of our wider community. Some of our student leaders wanted more opportunities to wear their own clothes whilst other leaders were looking for an opportunity to say thank you to our BSAK support staff. Working in conjunction with the Arabic department to celebrate Eid, the idea of wearing their own clothes and giving a small contribution was conceived. Contributions were generous and each of our support staff will receive an Eid gift of over 250 AED each.

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“We loved wearing our own clothes to school and it was amazing to show the BSAK Support Staff our appreciation for all the hard work they do” Frank Carter Primary Head Boy

SNACK AND CHAT GROUP We are delighted that our Snack and Chat groups are up and running now. There are a number of opportunities throughout the day for children to talk to and engage with other adults outside their normal classroom and year groups. We have Sam Walter, running groups at lunchtime and we also have three Snack and Chat after school clubs.

Snack and Chat is about creating a space where children can talk about whatever they want in an informal environment whilst having either their lunch or a snack. There is no set agenda to discussions, we follow the lead of the children. To give you a flavour of some of the topics covered so far: how to start and maintain friendships, how to find people you’ve got things in common with, questions about next year, learning how to make a cup of tea and serve it and celebrating success.

We have also recently run some Year 6 - Year 7 transition Snack and Chat lunchtime sessions where children have had the opportunity to share any worries they may have about the move, have their confidence boosted and look at mindset so they can see Secondary School as a new and exciting step.

RESTORATIVE JUSTICE PRACTICES As part of our 5 Year Strategic Wellbeing plan we continually look to develop and update our policies in partnership with students, parents and governors.

With this in mind we are in the process of updating our Rewards/Sanctions/Behaviour Policy. Once approved by the Governing body this will be shared with you through the Parent Portal and on our School Website.

Following research, as a Primary school, we wanted to have a system in place that supports our school values of empathy and care, respect and inclusivity, honesty and integrity.

Adopting a Restorative Justice/Practice approach enables us to stay true to our school values as well as support our Relationship vision of what Wellbeing is at BSAK.

Please scan the QR Code and watch this short video for a brief introduction.

We are at the start of our restorative practices journey. We have conducted training sessions with all staff over the last two years, we have our 5 questions that we ask when conflict arises and we try to use affective statements to communicate feelings. As Covid restrictions continue to lift, we will look to introduce classroom circles, restorative chats and mediation and restorative circles.

BSAK WELLBEING 1 STOP SHOP We have a number of new updates for you (Please scan the QR Code).

See the first tab for directions to updates on Restorative Practices, the Teenage brain and some transition resources.

Please do get in touch if you have found a brilliant resource that has helped you as a parent, that you feel would be of benefit to others and we can potentially share.

Also, if there is a subject you would like to know more about and we haven’t covered it yet in our 1 Stop Shop, please get in touch with: swalter@britishschool.sch.ae and we can conduct some research and share our findings with you and the wider parent community.

OUR LITTLE BIT TO SAVE THE PLANT ANYONE HAVING HOT DINNERS AT SCHOOL FOR THE REST OF TERM 3: YEAR 3-6 We are encouraging our children to bring their own set of cutlery in to eat their lunches with, so as to not be using single use plastic knives and forks each day. If you could support this initiative that would be fantastic thank you. As soon as we are able to reintroduce cutlery we will let you know.