Sharing Camden Practice

Happiness Project – Christ Church NW3

Key Points

We know that all children experience times when they feel less happy and, through our Happiness Project, we wanted to equip them with a range of strategies they can use to help themselves and others a

Purpose

What were your reasons for doing this development work?

  • To develop understanding of happiness and what makes us happy.
  • To develop this in all members of school community through whole school work involving children, staff and parents.
  • To support emotional well-being and emotional resilience in all pupils (and the wider school community), giving them the skills to support their own mental and emotional health.

Who were the identified target learners?

We targeted the whole school (191 children), the staff (24 members) and all the parents.

What did you do? (What success criteria did you use?)

We wanted to promote the importance of positive mental health and wellbeing for the children, staff and parents within the school community.  We based our Happiness Project on Action for Happiness’ ‘10 Keys to Happier Living’.

Throughout the Autumn term, we explored one theme per week where the children got to take part in a variety of activities to support their learning and understanding of these themes.  We also did an introduction week at the start of the project and a review week at the end.

See the attachment below for an overview of the themes we covered.

What specific teaching resources did you use?

Please see the attachment below for lesson ideas, activities and links to resources.

Outcomes and Impact

What has been the impact on pupil learning and teaching?

We had had an extremely positive response to the project from staff, parents and children.  We have noticed children being able to regulate their emotions by using some of the strategies taught during the resilience and also the awareness week.  We have also noticed children using terminology such as ‘bounce back ability’, ‘resilience,’ ‘mindfulness’ etc.  Children seem to have more of an understanding about the kinds of things that can make them happy.  During the review week, classes were asked to recap over all the learning that had taken place.  In terms of impact on parents we have received some very positive feedback.

Evidence of impact on pupil learning and teaching/leadership

At the beginning of the project during the introduction week, we asked all the children in the school to complete a survey to get an idea of their views on happiness and what makes them happy.  We asked children in Reception and Year 1 to fill out a simplified version of the questionnaire.  At the end of the project, we re-did the questionnaire with some additional questions asking the children to reflect on their favourite parts of the project and what they have learnt from it.  We also sent out a questionnaire to parents asking them to describe the impact (if any) that the project had had on the children.

Attachments