Research School Network: Mental Health Matters: integrating social and emotional learning skills through reading How can we use reading as an opportunity to provide pupils with a toolbox that supports wellbeing?

This year Children’s Mental Health Week is 5^th-11^th February, the aim of this is to bring awareness to an issue that we are grappling with on a daily basis. According to an NHS England report published today, 1 in 5 children and young people aged 8 – 25 years now have a probable mental health condition – around 5 children in every classroom. This is an increase from 1 in 9 in 2017. Children’s mental health and wellbeing is one of the most commonly cited challenges on Pupil Premium strategy statements.

We are aware of the pressures of funding and capacity within the wider system, issues outside of the control of teachers and school leaders, so what can we do in the classroom? How can we support children to develop a wellbeing toolbox?

Recommendation 2 from the improving social and emotional learning (SEL) in primary schools guidance report emphasises the importance of integrating and modelling SEL skills through everyday teaching. English lessons are an excellent opportunity for this, children can use stories as the basis for discussing feelings and motivations. Open ended questions can enable children to link fiction to their own experiences, learn new vocabulary and practise applying social and emotional skills.

To connect the characters and situations in a book with the children’s experiences, the Year 3 teacher plans to read a passage from a book at least twice. During the second reading, they aim to use questions that a) increase children’s emotional vocabulary; b) prompt reflective self-questioning; and c) ask children to link the story to their own circumstances. Books such as The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy provide fertile ground for this type of discussion.

Open-ended questions like those above enable children to link fictional texts to their own experiences, learn new vocabulary, and practise applying social and emotional skills. 

Character emotion charts are a brilliant resource to support this, by displaying a range of emotions the children can use these as prompts to describe their own feelings and as a scaffold to support their inferences about the characters that they encounter through reading. Identifying the vocabulary linked to emotions and feelings is an important component of explicit vocabulary instruction to enable children to confidently articulate how they are feeling whilst also extending the range of vocabulary that they can utilise within their writing.

How will your school mark Children’s Mental Health Week?

What opportunities are there for further integration of support for mental health and well-being within the curriculum?