Thrive-Online - notes for head teachers & senior leadership teams
Use of Thrive-Online
Notes for head teachers and senior leadership teams
Introduction
Based on neuroscience and attachment research, Thrive is a rigorous, targeted and measured approach to the development of emotional and social wellbeing in children and young people. It teaches adults how to be, and what to do, with children’s differing and sometimes challenging behaviour, so that students can be supported to become more self-assured and ready to engage with life and learning.
Thrive is underpinned by Thrive-Online a screening and assessment tool with extensive action planning resources. The program ensures that staff are able to deliver targeted interventions, chart progress and measure outcomes at individual, class and organisation level.
How can Thrive-Online data help the leadership team? The class screening tool can be used to screen children against age-related expectations which provides a valuable emotional/social profile for each class in school. It also helps to identify those children in need of individual support that might otherwise be missed.
Action plans can be created for each class and reviewed at intervals to chart progress and give a measure of the impact of Thrive across the school. School/setting leaders are able to use data from Thrive-Online to:
- Improve the well-being of children
- Provide impact data for different audiences including Parents, Governors, Local Authorities, Academy Trust Boards and OFSTED
- Contribute to the Whole School Self Evaluation
- Offer additional information to support strategic planning as part of the Whole School Improvement Plan
- Plan effective CPD for staff
The individual profiling tool is used to gain a more in-depth understanding of the needs of individual students and to tailor individual action plans to meet their specific emotional and social developmental needs. As with the group screening tool, individual children are reassessed at intervals to chart their progress and measure outcomes.
How should you start? It is possible to start with an individual profile for a particular child (or children) known to be in difficulty. For most schools however, the preferred route is to start with a class screening to ensure that:
- those working just below age related expectations are supported by class action plans
- those working further below age related expectations are signposted for individual action planning
- children with particular needs (e.g. over adapted children) do not go unmissed
Thrive recommend that whole class profiling takes place three times during the academic year - usually in October, February and June. Experience shows that starting to screen in October means that staff have had time to get to know their new classes and profiles can be reviewed in February and then again in June.
Ideally you will have a Licensed Practitioner in situ (or under training) when they start using Thrive-Online. Initially all Licensed Practitioners will sit alongside class teachers and teaching assistants to profile their classes. The class teacher is then able to develop an action plan to support the class and those children identified as needing one-to-one support are referred to the Licensed Practitioner for individual profiles and tailored action planning. In this way, the class teachers are able to take ownership of the emotional and social development of their class.
If you would like any further information about how you can use Thrive-Online as a Head teacher or Senior Leader, or information on wider staff training, please give us a call on 01392 797 550 or email: enquires@thriveapproach.com