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Growing Positive Self-Talk this Children’s Mental Health Week

Kathryn Ferguson

Year 6 Teacher at Notting Hill & Ealing High School (NHEHS) and GDST Trust Consultant Teacher for PSHE in Junior Schools

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 ‘Since taking up the Trust Consultant Teacher role four years ago, Kathryn Ferguson has led collaborative initiatives to mark Children’s Mental Health Week across the GDST’s family of girls’ schools. Here she discusses this year’s focus on growing positive self-talk.’

It has never been more important to teach our students the concept, and importance, of positive self-talk. It is the foundation for taking care of their mental health and something we as educators try to encourage in our students from a young age.

By embedding the Zones of Regulation at Notting Hill & Ealing High (NHEHS) Junior School from Reception to Year 6, we are actively teaching the students to recognise their emotions and practise self-regulation; skills we hope will remain with them as they navigate their way through adolescence and beyond. 

Being part of the GDST allows collaborations and sharing of resources between schools. At NHEHS, we have an annual “Healthy Minds” focus in the two weeks after the Christmas break, to bring taking care of our mental health to the forefront of our PSHE lessons. The lessons taught over those weeks are based on the theme of Children’s Mental Health Week for that year, and are shared with the PSHE Lead Teachers in the twenty-six schools which make up the GDST. 

This year, we linked the “Know Yourself, Grow Yourself” theme from Place2Be  to the Zones of Regulation. After establishing what a ‘healthy mind’ might look like and watching ‘Anxiety’ enter Riley’s mind in Disney’s Inside Out 2, we discussed what the students would say to a classmate who found themselves feeling in the Blue (sad/worried) or Yellow (frustrated/wiggly/a little out of control) Zone when they were trying to complete their class work.

Not unexpectedly, my Year 6 class offered kind, positive and helpful responses such as “Don’t worry, you’ll get better if you keep trying!”, “Why don’t you ask the teacher?” and “Have you tried it this way?”.  There was a generally satisfied, relaxed feeling of having said the ‘right’ thing to their friend in the classroom. 

I clicked, without a word, onto the next slide with the title: “Do you always speak to yourself that way when you find something tricky?”.  Tangible silence, followed by audible intakes of breath, quickly coupled with nervous giggles, groans of recognition, cries of “But it’s different…”, along with shoulder shrugs and nods of acknowledgement, as they came to the realisation that the way in which they speak to themselves, is in fact, not necessarily the way they would speak to others. 

What followed was an open and honest discussion where the crux of the matter was: Just as you get to know someone before you decide to enter a friendship or build a relationship with them, you need to get to know and build a relationship with yourself in the same way. Would you want to be friends with someone who put you down? Self-talk matters as much as, and potentially even more, than the words we use with others. This led easily into discussing the role of the ‘Inner Coach’ and what its purpose might be in various situations. 

During the second lesson of this two week unit of work, we focussed on practical activities that promote taking care of our mental health.  We wanted the students to try lots of different options, so that they could find out what worked well for them. These included: 

  • Melting, box and five finger breathing techniques
  • Snowflake body scan 
  • Rehearsing positive affirmations and displaying them in the classroom
  • Mindfulness colouring 
  • Butterfly Hug
  • Guided meditation – The Star and The Worry Tree sections
  • Yoga with Adriene, both in class and set as a homework for Year 6 
  • Regularly writing in their Proud Journals, reflecting on their learning from that week with the sentence starters: Academically, I am proud…, Personally, I am proud…, Next week, I will… and, I would like my teacher to know…

The struggle between focussing on the ‘Inner Coach’ and ‘Inner Critic’ as part of promoting positive mental health isn’t a new one, and this is by no means the end of the conversation. Empowering the girls to question and reflect on their self-talk and get to know themselves better is part of the GDST’s broader mission to bolster girls’ self-esteem and build their self-confidence at every stage of their school journey. 

Teacher takeaways/practical steps:

  • Equipping students with a variety of tools for promoting positive mental health is the focus, so offer opportunities for them to try out various techniques and strategies 
  • Factor in time during lessons for students to put the tools into action – practice makes permanent  
  • Encourage students to say positive affirmations aloud, as experience in rehearsing phrases can help the words become easier to access when needed
  • Continue to reference strategies taught and concepts discussed during Children’s Mental Health Week throughout the year to build on these life skills
  • Activities that we have used in our classrooms at NHEHS in Years 1 – 6 can be accessed via the hyperlinks in the blog 

Date

3 February 2025

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