The Pastoral Care worker is responsible for training and supervising the Whizz Kids, two children from each year 2 class are chosen at the beginning of the year. Their role is to help and encourage children at playtimes to use the play equipment in the appropriate way. They have been trained to teach children games to play with the equipment individually or in a group.
They can be identified by wearing a high visibility waistcoat. They are also responsible to help tidy away the equipment at the end of playtimes.
Whizz Kids in action
The Pastoral Care Worker is responsible for training and supervising the Playground Pals. Two children from each class across Year 2 are trained at the beginning of the year. They are trained to use restorative questioning to help solve problems that may arise at playtimes.
Two children are on duty every playtime, they can be identified by wearing a yellow tabard with smiley face on the front . Peer mediation principles are followed.
Here is an example of the questions they ask:
What happened?
What were you thinking?
How were you feeling?
Who else was involved?
What do you need to make things better?
A restorative approach in school shifts the emphasis from managing behaviour to focusing on building, nurturing and repairing relationships.
Each term assemblies are delivered to remind the whole school of the Playground Pals role and responsibilities and how they can help solve problems.
An important part of the Pastoral Care Worker's role is the training and supervising of Year 6 Playground Buddies. Playground Buddies are trained to help encourage positive play with children across the school, but particularly the Year 3s and Year 4s. This involves them organising playground games and activities which they learned in their training; additionally they will look out for children who are on their own or find playing with others difficult and help engage them with play or just talk with them. Playground Buddies help take out and collect in all the playground equipment and take children to the medical room, if an adult has requested them to do so. New Playground Buddies from Year 5 will be trained up in the Summer term in preparation for September. The whole Year 2 group from the Infant School come across to HPJS to do activities and games with these new Playground Buddies during the Summer term. This helps build relationships before the new children start in September and helps them to feel more confident about transferring over to the Junior School.
The Pastoral Care Worker (PCW) is responsible for the training up and supervising of the Peer Mediators in the school. Peer Mediators are usually trained in Year 5 and continue in this role throughout Year 6. We currently have 25 trained Peer Mediators in Year 6.
They learn the necessary skills to help other children solve their friendship problems and agree a way forward that they are happy with by following a clear process. Mediation is voluntary and children only come to mediation if they really want to sort the problem out themselves. This is carried out in a safe environment where every person is supported and listened to throughout the session.
Every week two Peer Mediators are selected to do the ‘booking in’ service at morning break, and then at lunchtime, two other Peer Mediators will work with the pupils to help them resolve their friendship problem. The Peer Mediators keep their own records of the session and will feedback to the PCW or another member of staff if they have any further concerns or worries.
