Back to School is designed to support conversations between children, and between children and adults in school, giving time and space to pause, reflect and build relationships. Back to School helps schools to take a rights-based approach to supporting children in the days, weeks and months after they return to school.
Back to School is a relevant resource for those working with children returning to education after a period of trauma or disconnection. With activities designed to support the re-establishment of routines and relationships, enabling children who may be anxious about school and learning to re-engage with their education through an environment of support and flexibility.
Many of the activities may also be adopted to encourage reconnection and grounding after longer school breaks, such as the summer holidays.
Time to reflect is a collection of activities designed to support the re-establishment of routines and relationships, enabling children who may be anxious about school and learning to re-engage with their education through an environment of support and flexibility.
Our feelings matter is a collection of activities designed to support communication and the development of emotional literacy, as well building kindness, trust, empathy and respect between children and with adults.
As educators, we know that low mood, anger, anxiety, sadness and loneliness have a negative impact on children’s engagement and attainment at school. To do their best at school children tell us that they need to be able to share their feelings and talk about things going on in their lives.
Scotland may well be the only country in the world to have articulated that children should be loved. One of our National Outcomes (Scottish Government, 2018) states: ‘We do all we can to ensure our children grow up in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding…‘ and it continues ‘Our schools are loving, respectful and encouraging places where everyone can learn, play and flourish’.
The language of this National Outcome draws on the UNCRC (Preamble), which states that children should grow up ‘in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding’. This echoes what children tell us about the importance of feeling loved, included and celebrated at school. It is because of the UNCRC and what children tell us that we talk about love at Children’s Parliament.
Happiness, love and understanding is a collection of activities that will help you to place love, respect and self-care at the heart of the curriculum.
While many children can be excited to return to school and reunite with friends and social activities, many can also experience levels of anxiety and worry about peer relationships. For some there can be worries about bullying.
The Our friendships activities are designed to help you support children to reconnect with peers, to reflect on how to be a good friend and help everyone to be included.
Children’s self-confidence and attitude to learning matter.
UNCRC Article 28 requires us to encourage regular attendance and to reduce the disconnect from school and learning that may be a consequence of school-closure or long-term absence. Furthermore, our educational efforts should be directed to ensuring that the experience of school is focused on the development of the child’s personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential (UNCRC Article 29).
Ability alone is not enough: how we think about ourselves matters too.
Bob Burden, Educational Psychologist
The Me as a learner activities will support you to build learner confidence and to re-engage children with learning after a period of absence or disruption.
Back to School was first developed in 2020 by Children’s Parliament with support from school staff in Aberdeen, Clackmannanshire, Dundee, and the Scottish Borders.
Originally developed as a resource for educators working with P5 to S2 children returning to school post-pandemic, the resources below provide support for children’s health and wellbeing learning – each activity plan correlates with Curriculum for Excellence Experiences and Outcomes.
The original online resource (archived here) was contextualised by a series of blog posts collated via our Covid-19 tag and available here.
To complement the online resource, an activity pack for children called Adventures in Wellbeing was designed with Members of Children’s Parliament to support children’s wellbeing at home and in the run up to their return to the classroom. The packs were sent out via post to our cohort of Members of Children’s Parliament.
