The purpose of Wellbeing Week is to highlight the importance of strong mental health, resilience and overall happiness.  In order to support excellent academic progress we have chosen what is traditionally one of the most stressful and difficult weeks in the school year in which to conduct this.  The focus of Well-Being is to teach students about the ‘Five Ways to Well-Being’ and embedding them within our community here at Beths.  The ‘Five Ways to Well-Being’ have been developed by the New Economics Foundation and are based on the latest research into strong mental health.  As a school with exceptionally high academic expectations we believe that it is particularly important to build resilience in this way.

The Five Ways to Well-Being are:   Connect, Be Active, Take Notice, Keep Learning and Give.

In order to address these as a whole school, we have been doing the following as a community:

• Turn it off Tuesday – no phones for 24 hours – all parents were invited to join in
• Photography competition with the theme – ‘Beauty of Nature’
• Fundraising all week for Water Aid highlighting communities less fortunate than our own
• Additional inclusive sports sessions running every lunchtime and after school
• ‘Family or Connect Day’ on Friday 7 December.

To support the ‘Five Ways to Well-Being’ we closed the school on Friday 7 December and asked students to use this extra time to connect with their parents, family or carers.  In the event that parents are at work, we asked students to complete learning at home which is fun and self-directed from the new Beths Super Curriculum which will be launched on the school website prior to the week. We will also encourage students to think about connecting more with nature or trying something new. All students were given a Well-Being Journal to complete and record their well-being development.

In addition to developing our understanding of the ‘Five Ways to Well-Being’ we also believe that, by closing the school for a day at this time of our most busy term, it will give an invaluable opportunity for students and staff alike to recharge their batteries for the final weeks of the term.  Our belief is that this will add to our overall productivity in what is the most intense part of the learning year.