At Chapel Road Primary School, PATHS is a key part or our school curriculum and it stands for

                             Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies 

We actively promote the positive well-being and emotional well-being of our children by incorporating PATHS into our daily life.

The programme, which has been developed by Barnardo's, empowers all our children to develop the fundamental social and emotional learning skills, which will enable them to make positive choice throughout life.

What is PATHS?

PATHS is a programme of lessons and strategies that helps children manage their emotions, communicate effectively and problem solve independently.

It takes a holistic approach to include all children, families and staff are involved.

PATHS is a research based programme grounded in the science of children’s brain development. It uses progressive schemes of work, engaging resources and diverse activities to establish a positive classroom.

PATHS helps children with…

• Self-esteem, self-confidence and self-control
• Frustration & anger management
• Attention and concentration
• Thinking before they act out
• Emotional understanding
• Expressing their feelings in a positive way
• Understanding that all feelings are okay, but some behaviours are not ok
• Preparing for change (e.g. moving to Secondary School)

Key features of the PATHS Programme

Feelings

The children are taught how to recognise different feelings, what it feels like to be happy, frustrated or sad etc. They are also taught what it might look like for other people. Feelings are described as comfortable or uncomfortable but all feelings are ok. e.g. It’s ok to feel upset or angry it’s how we then deal with these feelings. The children will build up a set of feeling cards so they can show and talk about how they are feeling.

Compliments

Building children’s self esteem is key to PATHS so everyday in each class there is a Child of the Day. The child will do special tasks throughout the day but most importantly be given compliments that are then recorded and sent home. We encourage parents/guardians to add another compliment to the list at home. The compliments from home are shared with the class and then can be displayed.

Problem solving

PATHS is about feelings, understanding our own and others. PATHS help the children to recognise that it is OK to feel sad or angry but it’s not OK to act out because of this feeling. PATHS offers strategies to deal with problems that arise. In Primary 1 and Primary 2 this is through Twiggle the Turtle, Primary 3 to Primary 7 use traffic lights.