Our Vision
Be The Best Me is unique to Heyes Lane! We have created this bespoke area of our curriculum as we feel it provides an opportunity to teach the children about a wide range of issues which can be taught as individual themes or as an element of the children’s thematic learning. Within our Be The Best Me curriculum, we aim to cover all aspects of the statutory Relationships Education as well as the requirements to learn about physical health and mental wellbeing at primary school. Children’s health and well-being is an ever-growing issue. We have a holistic approach to health and an area of our curriculum which allows the children at Heyes Lane to ‘be the best me’ they can be! This curriculum provides the children at Heyes Lane with both the information and knowledge to make good decisions about their health and wellbeing. That may be as varied as living an active lifestyle, eating healthily, learning about the impact of hormones in the brain, discussing how they feel about their friendships or sharing worries that they may have at home or at school. In addition to this, we recognised that although we promoted the ideals of personal development and character education each day at school, we didn’t have the opportunity to teach the children about the character traits and personal attributes that will help them throughout the rest of their lives as bespoke lessons. In addition to this, we wanted the opportunity to teach the children about their emotions discretely – how they identify them, manage them appropriately, show empathy to others or display social skills. Ultimately we want all our children to be articulate individuals, who can discuss how they feel and display a full range of character traits and personal attributes.
Curriculum Content & Design
As we have developed Be The Best Me for the children attending Heyes Lane, we know that it meets the specific needs of our pupils. The curriculum has been structured in two separate areas: SMSC and Emotional Intelligence. Each of these aspects make up one half of the subject and therefore have equal weighting in the curriculum. Both aspects, SMSC and Emotional Intelligence, have been planned with the needs of the children in each year group at the forefront of everything we teach. We have devised a progressive curriculum which shows how learning develops appropriately from EYFS to Year 6. The area of SMSC is taught both thematically and as stand-alone Be The Best Me themes for one half hour session per week. Emotional Intelligence is only taught discretely through one weekly half hour circle time session or Mindfulness lesson. We value a connected environment and recognise the importance of children feeling safe, confident and valued. Our lessons provide children with the opportunity to ask questions and carefully consider and respect the opinions of others..
Progression & Outcome
Children will leave our school as young people who:
- have the information that they need to make good decisions about their own health and wellbeing
- understand physical health and mental wellbeing are interlinked
- understand that good physical health contributes to good mental wellbeing
- can persevere with tasks
- understand what is meant by resilience and can continue despite setbacks
- have positive self-esteem and believe they can achieve
- have respect for themselves and others
- are open-minded, respectful, socially and morally responsible members of society
- can appreciate difference and diversity
- can develop positive, healthy relationships with their peers both now and in the future.
- understand the aspects involved in RSE at an age appropriate level
- understand and manage their emotions
- have the vocabulary and confidence needed to clearly articulate their thoughts and feelings in a climate of openness, trust and respect
