SPHE- Social Personal and Health Education
The Social Personal and Health Education Curriculum (SPHE) is for children from junior infants to sixth class.
The SPHE curriculum…
- fosters children’s well-being, self-confidence and sense of belonging
- develops children’s sense of personal responsibility for their own behaviour and actions
- promotes children’s self-awareness and understanding by helping them to manage their own feelings, to recognise and appreciate individual abilities, and to cope with change of various kinds
- supports children to become active and responsible citizens.
The curriculum consists of three strands:
- Myself
- Myself and others
- Myself and the wider world.
We use a number of programmes for SPHE in St. Brendan's NS:
R.S.E
Relationship and Sexuality Education is now part of the Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE). This is presently being implemented in all classes. RSE is part of Social, Personal and Health Education (SPHE). RSE provides children with structured opportunities to develop the knowledge, attitudes, values, beliefs and practical skills necessary to establish and sustain healthy personal relationships as children and, subsequently, as adults. If you have any questions about the content for any class level please contact the school or visit: https://www.pdst.ie/primary/health-wellbeing/RSE and the Health Promotion website https://www.healthpromotion.ie/publication/fullListing?category=Sexual+Health&searchHSE= where you will find excellent materials to help you to support your child's relationship and sexuality education.
Click on the links below to access RSE support materials for parents.
STAY SAFE PROGRAMME -
The Stay Safe Programme has been in operation in the School for many years. The Stay Safe programme itself is a personal safety skills programme designed for use with primary school children from Junior Infants through to 6th class. The programme seeks to enhance children’s self-protective skills by participation in lessons on safe and unsafe situations, getting lost, bullying, inappropriate touch, secrets, telling and stranger danger. The programme aims to give children the skills necessary to enable them to recognise and resist abuse/victimisation and teaches them that they should always tell (an adult that can help) about any situation which they find unsafe, upsetting, threatening, dangerous or abusive. Co-operation between Parents and Teachers is essential to the success of the Programme. http://www.staysafe.ie/parents.htm for more information for parents.
The Walk Tall Programme is also used across the school as part of the SPHE curriculum. The emphasis in the programme is on helping children to develop health-promoting life skills that will serve them well over time. http://pdst.ie/walktall for more information.
The themes covered at infant level are:
- Myself and My World
- My Five Senses
- Belonging and Cooperation
- Taking Care of My Body
- Feelings
- Celebration
Weaving Wellbeing
In response to guidelines on mental health issued by the Department of Education and Skills, this year we have introduced the Weaving Wellbeing Programme to classes from 2nd to 6th. Weaving Well-Being is the first Irish designed positive mental health programme of its kind which aims to enhance well-being in children.
The Weaving Well-Being programme gives children the opportunity to weave positivity into their daily lives through a range of activities in a variety of areas.
These areas include identifying and using their authentic character strengths, boosting positive emotions, developing and nurturing positive relationships and connections, building practical resilience skills (including mindfulness) and developing self-efficacy through empowering beliefs.
The infant classes engage with the Fun Friends programme to also help develop self-esteem, positivity, boost friendship skills and improve children’s overall sense of wellbeing.
Webwise:
Webwise is an excellent Irish internet site set up to provide parents, pupils and teachers with the most up to date information about the safe use of the internet and digital devices. It has a huge range of advice sheets and video tutorials to help children and adults to fully understand how to be web wise and avoid online bullying, malware etc
Visit https://pdst.ie/node/811 for a vast array of resources for Irish Parents
