Newsletters

The Thrive Programme Roll-out continues

This week the children have been introduced to the concept of ‘Imagine it going right’. This is a very important concept with things like the Christmas plays coming up for our year 2’s and 5’s. But it doesn’t just apply to those big events – the kids can use it every day.  

One example is if a child’s best friend is off sick and they are not looking forward to playtime because they think they will have no one to play with.  

This child is imagining going outside, standing on their own and having no one to play with …  and because that is what they are imagining, that is what is likely to happen.  

They are not building the belief that they can make a difference to the outcome, they won’t put any effort into changing that outcome and they will come away from playtime thinking  ‘I knew I’d be on my own/I don’t have any friends’.  

However, if they imagined themselves looking for other children who were playing a game they liked, imagined themselves feeling confident enough to walk over and ask them to play, being accepted into their game and then playing happily, they are much more likely to put effort into making that a reality.  

When helping children develop their imagination, try not to use ‘don’t think about that’ as a tactic to distract them from an unhelpful imagined outcome they have created.  

By asking someone not to think about something all we are doing is inadvertently directing them to think about it. For example, if I said ' whatever you do - don’t think about the pink elephant?' What immediately pops into your head? Most likely pink elephant... 

Instead, say ‘let’s imagine what could go right instead’ or ‘lets imagine what you want to happen’, ‘ tell me about how you would want playtime to go’, ‘tell me how you would want to feel at playtime’, ‘tell me how you would want to behave/respond at playtime’... and help them to make a plan. This way the child is encouraged to imagine a helpful/positive outcome rather than fixating on an unhelpful one.  

Using our imagination to work for us instead of against us is a skill and, as with any skill, it takes time and practise to build and master. Research tells us that we need 10,000 hours of practice to become a master of a certain skill (like throwing and catching in PE).  

Using our imagination to help rather than hinder us is no exception. We will need to keep modelling this and helping the children to practise these skills many times before it becomes embedded.