Ringland School Wales

A successful whole school approach to embedding Jigsaw PSHE to further support and enhance the school’s nurturing ethos
and its Health and Wellbeing offer.

Significant Success

Ringland is an inner-city primary school, the community that the school supports has high levels of deprivation, with around 50% of children receiving Free School Meals. In addition, within the mainstream classrooms, there are significant numbers of children that are ALN* with 36% of the cohort on the ALN register. The teachers recognised that the children didn’t always communicate their emotions clearly. They were reluctant to explore their feelings openly and had a growing resistance and inability to communicate. The school identified that Jigsaw PSHE would provide learning opportunities for the children to thrive as ambitious, capable learners and healthy confident individuals, BUT they also recognised that this would not happen overnight.

Jigsaw Success Story - Ringland Primary School 4 Supporting pupils to feel, safe, confident and secure post pandemic became even more of a priority at Ringland Primary in 2021. Having the courage to speak out, regulate their feelings and thoughts, collaborate and listen to each other was a key motivating factor for Ringland Primary School, when they became a pilot school for Jigsaw PSHE. As a school, Mental Health and wellbeing soon became a priority for all stakeholders, the school quickly recognised the huge benefit of Jigsaw and that it would provide and a platform to enhance their existing wellbeing offer. With the new Curriculum for Wales fast approaching, becoming part of the Jigsaw community would be an enabler to re-ignite the school’s values of compassion, curiosity and courage within the Jigsaw programme.

Without any surprise the children were becoming more challenging, difficult to manage, noisy in class, angry and emotionally demanding. There were groups of children who modelled ‘learner helplessness’ a concern post Covid that became apparent across the school. Supporting Pupils self-efficacy became a greater importance. Teachers wanted to enable children to feel supported and to recognise, understand and control their emotions. The teachers identified that Jigsaw would support the staff and children with a renewed focus on breaking the negative barriers to their learning, by being more Mindful they were able to regulate and take control as opposed to being out of control. It was evident that the children who were usually more emotional charged, were now in the optimum state and condition for learning... small successes!

The six sections of the Jigsaw lessons gave the children a platform to success, the school was able to make effective use of their Monday Mornings and soon the pupils renamed these Jigsaw sessions as ‘Mindful Mondays’ and so, across the whole school, time was designated every Monday morning to facilitate Jigsaw and is still a whole school approach to Health and Wellbeing to date. During this dedicated Jigsaw time the children began to know how to improve their behaviours for learning and respond to each other in a respectful manner. The Jigsaw Charter enabled all the children to feel safe, secure and valued. Pupils in Year 5 and 6 were soon able to transfer vocabulary from the Jigsaw lessons into the whole school life. Where children had disagreements, they were able to rationally identify who had the “power and control” in situations. The Jigsaw programme also supported the Schools Journey as a Silver accredited Rights and respecting school where children’s rights are learned, understood and lived in Ringland Primary May 2022. Reference to the programme was highlighted within Ringland Silver award report.

Impact of Jigsaw

Jigsaw Success Story - Ringland Primary School 3 Following the successful roll out of Jigsaw across the school the ‘Calm Me’ aspect of the six sections of the lesson enabled the children to relax and open their minds and get ready for their learning. Not only was this used in Jigsaw, but it became part of the afternoon ‘refocus’ after lunch time and in some classes, at the end of the day. The children became more connected in their learning, and together they began to show a strong awareness of the ‘calm down’ safe spaces’ which now exist in classrooms and around the school. The children know if they feel stressed, anxious or angry how they can use these areas to refocus, regulate their feelings and that staff will always support them. Through listening to learners, the children designed their ‘safe places’ and along with the ‘safe space’s’ the children began to use emotional thermometers’ linked to the colour monster story. The children recognised that throughout the day they experienced different feelings. In Jigsaw validating feelings is a priority. Jerrie Cat and the class Jigsaw piece can be found in the ‘safe places’ for the children to cwtch and talk to if needed.

Jigsaw Success Story - Ringland Primary School 12 The Jigsaw programme is designed to support the children to open their minds to learning, feel connected and focus on their task. Connect us games, ensured that the children got to know each other better and improve their collaboration skills at the beginning of the lesson. The teachers noticed better communication and turn taking, pupils patience developed and soon these games were being played outside. Connect us, brought fun and laughter, but also enhanced our pupils thinking and metacognition it ignited their curiosity and courage to participate. All children can actively engage and as a result the majority of children have acquired greater skills in speaking and listening and grown in confidence.

Looking Forward

Jigsaw Success Story - Ringland Primary School A lack of any formal education for a prolonged period meant that pupils couldn’t communicate as well during the pandemic, but it’s clear the positive impact of Jigsaw which has allowed Ringland teachers opportunities to practise oracy, plan purposeful talk and enable meaningful interactions between one another in Jigsaw sessions and beyond. Children’s passion for talk is developing and talking for a purpose is facilitated through each of the lessons in the ‘tell me, show me’ sections. We would like to continue to fully embed Jigsaw into Ringland’s community and school life and successfully train to become a Jigsaw FAMILIES school to support our most vulnerable families and children within our community. We will carry out yearly staff audits of needs and support and continue to listen to our learners to maximise the impact of the Jigsaw programme. Further into the future we would also like to be considered and work towards becoming a ‘Flagship’ school to share our journey with other schools, in supporting our children and families in Wales.