The PRU’s programme usually has two groups of six pupils who benefit from weekly two-hour intervention sessions over a twenty-week period. Currently, one group consists of foundation phase children and lower key stage 2 pupils, and the other Year 5 and Year 6 pupils. Sessions take place in a discreet room that provides for activities such as video-based learning and the use of puppets to model and role play social and emotional skills including managing ‘big feelings’, turn taking, sharing, problem solving and exploring friendships. Every session offers structured opportunities for pupils to practise these skills in a variety of ways including at healthy snack time.
During each session, pupils earn ‘marbles’ as rewards for positive engagement, which contribute towards a weekly community-based activity incentive such as playing in the local park or visiting a local cafe or shop. The social and emotional skills that pupils develop during the programme are then practised further in real-life contexts in the community.
Pupils usually have straightforward homework tasks that provide the opportunity for parental involvement in the programme activities too. The PRU also offers support to parents to help their understanding of how collaborative engagement with the intervention increases its success. Both school-based and home-based activities are planned to be lively, interactive and fun.
The PRU’s 20-week programme concludes with a celebratory graduation where parents, carers, partner schools and partner agencies are invited to share the success of the programme ‘graduates’.
During the pandemic first national lockdown remote learning period, the PRU’s leader of the programme took a creative, flexible and responsive approach to continue to meet the specific behavioural, emotional and learning needs of pupils following the programme. For example, staff made short videos using puppets to focus on particular issues and dilemmas that pupils might face during this time. The puppets reminded pupils of the ‘top tips’, tools, techniques and skills that they had learnt whilst attending the PRU to address these issues. Activities included the opportunity to explore emotions, which were then followed up by staff as part the PRU’s pastoral weekly welfare calls to pupils and their families. Staff sent videos two or three times a week.
Leaders at the PRU report that continuation of this programme during lockdown was vital to maintaining and improving these pupils’ behaviours. When the PRU re-opened fully, each group celebrated meeting together before continuing with the usual face-to-face programme, with almost all pupils highly engaged within a short period.
