Tollgate Community Junior School

Thrive

The Thrive Approach

Supporting our children’s emotional and social development is a priority at Tollgate. The Thrive Approach has been developed over many years helping children to flourish. It supports their emotional and social development and helps them feel happy and secure, able to enjoy friendships, relate well to others and be ready and able to learn.

Thrive and positive relationships

The Thrive Approach puts developing positive relationships at the heart of all interactions with children (and adults). It does this by focusing on the key things we can do to encourage positive relationships: by listening, attuning, validating and modelling that when things go wrong, we can bear it. This helps develop children’s ability to cope with life’s ups and downs. This is particularly relevant during these difficult times we have recently been living through.

Thrive at Tollgate

We have used Thrive at Tollgate for several years now. Started by Mrs Dale, we now have four members of staff fully trained. Using the Thrive online tool, each teacher assesses the children in their class 3 times a year so we can measure where the greatest need is and give support accordingly. This support can be little things in class, like staff looking out for a particular child and taking a bit of extra interest in them. Or it can lead to more intensive help: working in a small group or 1:1 with a child. All of our teachers and support staff have also had basic training on Thrive and use the same approach in every classroom.

Further information

If you are interested, there is plenty more information online about Thrive. We recommend starting with the Thrive website, which in turn has links to many more resources. If you would like to find out more about Thrive at Tollgate, please contact either Mr Walsh or Mrs Dale.