Pupil mental health and wellbeing is so important to all of us here at Ashgate.

This year, we have a mixture of old and new Wellbeing Champions, who were chosen for their desire to help others. They really care about the school and the other children. Their role is to support their classes and teachers by sharing wellbeing ideas. 

We meet every week to discuss mental health and wellbeing in school and to complete some special projects.

This year, in our first meeting, we did a mindfulness activity together. We used colourful pastels on black paper to express how a piece of music made us feel.

Our first project last year was to create some posters which tell other children how to cope with worry, sadness and anger because our pupil questionnaires earlier this year showed that this is something many pupils needed help with. The posters tell other pupils who they can talk to if they're feeling these emotions and give some suggestions of what they can do to help themselves feel better. The Wellbeing Champions worked so hard to produce such wonderful posters which we photocopied and stuck up around school.

We have presented a brilliant assembly to the rest of the school, all about our roles as Wellbeing Champions and how we can help others. We acted out the four zones of regulation, we taught everyone some self-regulation techniques and we shared our poster and peg projects.

We've also created a set of 'Positive Praise Pegs' for each class. Don't they look great! Teachers or other pupils can suggest who should be awarded a peg to wear for the rest of the day if someone is spotted doing one of these things.