At Rockmount, we recognise the importance of positive mental health and wellbeing for all our pupils to lead a happy, healthy and productive life. It is important for pupils to have a voice, be able to contribute ideas and influence how to improve the wellbeing of their peers and the wider school community. We are proud to have a group of children appointed by their peers as Wellbeing Ambassadors to help drive through positive change and support the whole school community.
Meet our 2023/ 2024 Wellbeing Ambassadors:
2023 - 2024
Wellbeing Ambassadors
Year 2: Benas and Olivia
Year 3: Theo and Stella
Year 4: Lea and Liliana
Year 5: Adanna and Isaac
Year 6: Cora and Rudi
The Ambassadors have the responsibility of leading and promoting wellbeing throughout the school. They drive the message forward and release the stigma around talking about challenging feelings and encourage people to talk. Wellbeing Ambassadors provide feedback on what’s working well and highlight any gaps in our whole-school approaches to wellbeing. The role of our Wellbeing Ambassadors also include:
Autumn Term
World Mental Health Day is run by the World Federation for Mental Health and takes place on 10th October every year. The overall aim of World Mental Health Day is to raise awareness of mental health issue and the support that is out there. At Rockmount, we started the week by holding an assembly to discuss what ‘What World Mental Day’ was and the importance of it. We discussed how mental health is all about how we feel and about the thoughts we have. We followed up our discussions within our classrooms, during circle time. We spoke about having choices and how to use strategies to help us with our feelings. The children then completed a piece of work reflecting this in their floor books.
World Kindness Day
During circle time, the Wellbeing Ambassadors spoke to their classes about what it meant to be kind and how being kind can have a positive impact on each other. We discussed how 'Kindness' can be contagious and when we are kind it inspires each other to be kind too. Following on from that, each class had the task of making a class 'Kindness' poem. The Wellbeing Ambassadors supported their class during this activity. After all the poems were completed, the Ambassadors helped to bind and collate all the poems to make our own 'Kindness Poetry' booklet.
2022-2023
Our newly appointed Wellbeing Ambassadors have been very busy during their first term in post.
Wellbeing Corners
One of their first responsibilities was to reestablish a wellbeing corner in their new classroom. They reminded their class about the purpose of the wellbeing corner, gathered ideas about what resources would be needed and with the support of their class teacher, established guidelines for using the area responsibly.
Kindness
The main focus this term for the Wellbeing Ambassadors was around kindness. Leading up to World Kindness Day and Anti-Bullying Week, the Wellbeing Ambassadors planned various activities to promote kindness across the whole school community. They led a circle time with their class, where they explained what kindness is and gave their class ideas of how they could be kind to themselves and others. During Anti-Bullying Week, the Wellbeing Ambassadors kept a special eye out for any children who were being particularly kind and gave them a kindness certificate for showing kindness to others. During lunchtimes, the Wellbeing Ambassadors gave out kindness chatterboxes to encourage their peers to continue to show kindness at lunchtime too. At the end of the week, the Wellbeing Ambassadors gave each child a heart to write down something they had done kind for someone else or something kind someone had done for them. This was then added to the Wellbeing Ambassadors' Kindness Tree display. To ensure kindness was spread across the whole school community, they gave kindness notes to parents/carers as they arrived in the morning, to pass on to someone else during the day.
5 Ways to Wellbeing
The children at Rockmount were invited to take part in the development of a programme which will be used to promote the 5 Ways to Wellbeing in schools across Croydon. Included in this programme will be a children's book and the children in KS2 were asked to draw some of the illustrations to be included in the book. The Wellbeing Ambassadors were then asked to help the author to 'narrow down' the selection of illustrations by talking about the use of calming colours in illustrations, the diverse range of characters that should be represented in the book and the small details of a character that sends a big message.
Winter Fair
The Wellbeing Ambassadors had a great time designing and painting Christmas Rocks for their enterprise project for the Winter Fair. They made a whopping £83 minus expenses.
Children's Mental Health Week
The Wellbeing Ambassadors worked hard to plan for one of the main events on their wellbeing calendar; Children's Mental Health Week. The theme this year for Children's Mental Health Week was, 'Let's Connect' and the Ambassadors planned and delivered a circle time to their classes to highlight the importance of connecting with others. As part of their planned activities, they wrote an acrostic poem with their classes. The Wellbeing Ambassadors also worked with the Digital Leaders and Cycling Club to produce a video which highlighted the importance of keeping safe.
Keeping Myself Safe Week
World Sleep Day - Pyjama Day
The Wellbeing Ambassadors were out in full force during World Sleep Day, sharing many facts about the importance of sleep with parents and carers. They also spent time quizzing their classes during circle time to find out how much they knew about sleep, then they shared some fun sleep facts with their classes.
Mental Health Awareness Week
An important part of the Wellbeing Ambassadors' role is to raise awareness of mental health issues. For Mental Health Awareness Week, the Wellbeing Ambassadors worked together to deliver a series of activities across the school to raise awareness around the theme of 'anxiety'. The Wellbeing Ambassadors decided they would share one of their favourite stories with children in KS1 - Ruby's Worries by Tom Percival. Ruby's Worries was the perfect story for helping younger children to share their hidden worries no matter how big or small. The Wellbeing Ambassadors then taught the children breathing techniques from Breathe Like a Bear by Kira Willey. The Wellbeing Ambassadors hoped that these techniques would help the children in KS1 manage their emotions if they were ever feeling anxious.
Croydon Press
Well done to our Wellbeing Ambassadors who all made it into the Croydon News for their instrumental role in helping to create a new interactive storybook to help boost the mental health of all young children in Croydon.
https://news.croydon.gov.uk/new-storybook-boosts-childrens-mental-health-and-wellbeing/
