NHS Togetherness STAGING

Unit Summary

Unit Overview & Teacher Mastery 

Written in conjunction with the NHS, this unit helps children become ‘Emotion Detectives,’ learning to name and recognise their emotions and notice where they feel them in their body. They learn to measure how big or small a feeling is using a simple scale, and explore emotions such as frustration and anxiety, understanding that a little worry can be helpful but big feelings are best shared with a trusted adult. Children practise strategies for managing big emotions and learn the phrase, ‘Can you help me with this big feeling?’ The unit closes by exploring how habits like sleep, movement, time outdoors and healthy food help look after both our bodies and our minds, leaving children with practical tools to recognise, measure and manage their feelings with growing confidence.

Throughout the unit, adults should model their own feelings alongside the children, showing that emotions are something everyone experience. Children are encouraged to sit with a feeling and process it by understanding and talking about it, rather than push it away, learning that all emotions deserve space rather than being squashed or ignored. This unit also highlights the importance of children's relationships with trusted adults, such as teachers and parents, in helping them recognise, express, and manage their feelings. Children often have strong emotional intuition and can sense what the adults around them are feeling, even if they do not yet know how to name it, so this unit offers a valuable opportunity for teachers to model vulnerability by sharing their own feelings, helping to build trust with their class.

Ideally, this set of six lessons should sit within a wider culture shift, with teachers, school staff and the whole school system oriented around emotional health, and enough time given for pupils to process and benefit fully. The programme recommends delivering these lessons once children have settled into Year 1, establishing a foundation in which the adults around them are attentive to and aware of their emotions. It could also be repeated as part of the transition into Year 2. Schools are encouraged to invite parents to complete the Togetherness online parenting course, helping them recognise emotions in themselves before recognising them in their children, alongside introducing an emotional health course for teachers embedded within the wider school culture. Children learn how to manage their own emotions by watching the adults around them, so it is important that adults remain regulated and in tune with their own feelings, as children rely on this modelling throughout their emotional development. Processing feelings together, rather than in isolation, helps children see that emotions are shared and manageable experiences, not something to navigate alone. Teachers will find masteries and scripts to support them when modelling healthy emotional practices to the children. 

National Curriculum Attainment Targets

• The range and scale of emotions (e.g. happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, nervousness) that they might experience in different situations. Pupils should understand that worrying and feeling down are normal, affect everyone at different times, and are not in themselves a sign of a mental health condition.
• How to recognise feelings and use varied vocabulary to talk about their own and others’ feelings.
• How to judge whether what they are feeling and how they are behaving is appropriate and proportionate.
• Where and how to seek support (including recognising the triggers for seeking support), including who in school they should speak to if they are worried about their own or someone else’s mental wellbeing or ability to control their emotions (including issues arising online).
• The benefits of physical activity, time outdoors, and helping others for health, wellbeing and happiness. Simple self-care techniques, including the importance of rest, time spent with friends and family, as well as hobbies, interests and community participation.
• The importance of promoting general wellbeing and physical health.