Firstly, I want to start the blog this week by saying a massive thank you again to all the schools that have supported us this half term. It has been a busy one, but we wouldn’t want it any other way. Yet again we are overwhelmed with all of your support.
We have mainly been working in the Preston and South Ribble schools this term, but we have also ventured further afield, covering some work over in Bacup, Chorley, Southport and even Cumbria. It means no two days are ever the same.
During this term we have supported individual children, some we support weekly, some fortnightly, and some just when it is needed. Every child and school is different, so we have been working with school staff to identify the best plan for the child; no two cases have been the same and we love the creativity that this gives us and, so far, the schools are loving this approach too.
We have worked with some amazing children over the term: one child was set a challenge to not spend all her time on her mum’s phone, as she was spending a significant amount of time looking at a screen. Following some intervention work, she no longer uses her mum’s phone and instead is putting her energies into raising money for charity. She is baking and cooking at home and is then selling the food she has made; she proudly told us that she has raised more than £90 already. School staff have also noticed a change in her behaviour – she should be very proud of herself.
We have also worked with a little girl that has been finding school a challenging place to be. She was ‘star of the week’ last week. We came up with a strategy together to help her in school and she has been simply amazing in how she is implementing this. We are proud of her, and know her mum is too as she shed a tear in the achievement assembly.
As well as working with individual children we have completed some parenting work, giving parents ideas to use at home, sometimes it is the smallest of ideas or a slight twist on a strategy that can help parents. We have also completed some whole class work, supporting challenging cohorts, we had a great time in one school where we delivered a circle time session focusing on listening skills; we left the class with strategies to implement and the feedback we had was so lovely.
A key part of our work is also about supporting staff in schools, it can be hard at times and schools are busy places. We have been providing supervision to staff, giving them time to ‘offload’ and ‘pick our brains’. It is important that staff feel listened to and know that they can talk through what’s going on in their classroom in a safe and supportive environment.
We have also completed a whole school behaviour audit, we loved this, and the school have been phenomenal in implementing the action plan that we produced; we are going back in September to see how things are going and we can’t wait for that.
Overall, it has been a busy half term, we are both loving our work (in case you hadn’t noticed).
On behalf of Reach we would like to wish all our schools a happy and restful half term.
Reach Behaviour 