At Moreland we support children to develop social and emotional intelligence through a comprehensive personal development curriculum that teaches our children to be kind, respectful, considerate and empathetic, helping them learn about their own feelings and those of others and giving them the skills they need to be emotionally literate, self-aware, safe and mentally well.

The school uses several approaches to support our social and emotional intelligence curriculum:

RULER

RULER is a whole school programme used to teach mental health and well being. 

RULER was created by The Yale Centre for Emotional Intelligence and is supported by extensive research in the USA and Australia. 

RULER stands for:

• Recognising emotions in yourself and others
• Understanding the causes and consequences of emotions
• Labeling emotions accurately – if you can name it you can tame it
• Expressing emotions appropriately
• Regulating emotions effectively

The children are taught these skills through a series of tools, known as anchor tools. 

The first anchor tool is called the Mood Meter and this tool builds emotional awareness and understanding. This tool is represented by a quadrant of four colours and feelings are plotted on this. This helps the children think of emotions in terms of amounts energy and pleasantness.   

First, children are taught to  ‘plot’ their feelings in one of the quadrants, and then think about the specific name of that feeling. Next, they learn to reflect on what caused them to feel that way and consider the consequences of that feeling. They learn strategies to maintain that mood or to shift it. 

Other tools include the class charter and the blueprint. The class charter is written and displayed by each class each year.  This identifies the feelings and associated behaviours children wish to see in their classroom. Charters are a powerful tool to ensure personal and social responsibility. They help everyone be the best version of themselves.

A hand out with all the tools and ideas for using them at home can be downloaded below.

iTIPS

At Moreland we use a trauma informed approach based on the iTIPS model.

iTIPs aims to develop:

• an understanding of the ways in which the experience of trauma can impact on social and emotional development
• an understanding of how this in turn impacts on people’s behaviour and relationships, including issues such as forming trusting relationships and dealing with setbacks, conflicts and challenge
• tools and structures to support practitioners to be resilient in working with emotional, social and learning needs of adults and children, and to actively build the skills of adults and children to self-regulate