The Thrive Approach

Supporting our children’s emotional and social development is a priority at Tollgate and therefore our Pastoral Support is central to the culture of our school. For many years, we have used The Thrive Approach to help children in our school to flourish. Thrive puts developing positive relationships at the heart of all interactions with children. 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 and helps them feel happy and secure, able to enjoy friendships, relate well to others and be ready and able to learn.

Thrive at Tollgate

Using the Thrive online tool, each teacher assesses the children in their class three 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 children. Or, it can lead to more intensive help: working in a small group or 1:1 with a child in Our House. All of our teachers and support staff have also had basic training on Thrive and use the same approach in every classroom.

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 do not hesitate to get in touch.

Our Pastoral Team

Mrs Brink Licensed Thrive Practitioner	Mrs May Licensed Thrive Practitioner	Mrs Booth Emotional Literacy Support Assistant (ELSA)