Thrive 

Lori Herbert leads the schools work in Thrive, as a Licensed Thrive Practitioner. At Telford Junior School, our children's social and emotional well-being is paramount. We aim to develop children emotionally so they are able to recognise and distinguish their emotions and learn ways of responding to their feelings appropriately. 

What is Thrive?

Thrive promotes children's positive mental health by helping adults know how to be and what to do in response to their behaviour. Based on established neuroscience, attachment theory and child development, the Thrive Approach provides training and an online profiling and action-planning tool to equip adults with the knowledge, insights and resources needed to develop the relationships that help children and young people to flourish and learn.

What are the principles of Thrive?

There are four guiding principles of the Thrive Approach:

• Every child is a unique person, constantly developing and learning in different ways and at different rates, each with his/her own abilities, talents and potential to be fulfilled.
• Children’s healthy development, emotional well-being and learning are crucially dependent upon, and promoted through, positive relationships.
• Children flourish when they are confident, self-assured, capable and resilient.
• Children thrive in enabling environments, in which their individual development, learning experiences and needs are understood, responded to and supported through strong partnerships with parents/carers.

With the support of Thrive training and Thrive-Online, adults learn how to help children and young people to:

• feel good about themselves
• know that they matter
• become more resilient and resourceful
• have a positive place in society
• form trusting, rewarding relationships
• be creative
• be compassionate and empathetic
• be thoughtful and self-aware
• be productive
• be able to overcome difficulties and setbacks

What does a Thrive session look like? 

Thrive uses arts and play-based activities with children to support healthy neural development, promote a positive sense of self and build optimal learning capacity. There are many artistic mediums that you can work with in the Thrive Approach, sand play, puppetry, story telling, music, drama, movement and dance, painting and drawing, each of which has particular benefits and strengths. The Thrive Approach integrates arts and creativity to support children’s emotional and social development.

What is Thrive Time? 

To continue to support the children’s social and emotional well-being and mental health awareness at school, we are really pleased to share an aspect of our curriculum which we have been developing this year. All children have the opportunity to participate in Thrive Time every day straight after lunch.

This is a time for the children to complete quiet, relaxing activities that they can choose, such as reading, drawing and colouring. These 10 minutes provide a chance for the children to regulate and therefore be best placed to flourish and learn for the afternoon.

Thrive helps children and young people for life's emotional ups and downs by practising mindfulness techniques, breathing exercises and regulation strategies. We feel like that this has already had such a positive impact in classrooms and children really enjoy this as part of their daily routine.