Teaching it well

Introducing Wholebeing to your class

The first lesson decides more than any lesson after it. Get it right, and the class arrives at lesson two already leaning in. Oversell it, or make it sound like homework for your feelings, and you spend the rest of term working against folded arms.

Say why, once, plainly

You do not need a speech. One sentence is enough: "We're going to spend a bit of time on the skills that never show up on a report card, like paying attention and resting properly." Say it, then move on. Teenagers trust plain more than they trust enthusiastic.

Set the ground rules once

Before the first activity, name three things and be done with it. Pass is always allowed: nobody has to speak, share, or join in on any given day, and nobody has to explain why not. Nothing here is graded: there is no right answer to how you feel or what you notice. What's said in this room stays in this room, with one honest caveat worth naming to students too: if something a student shares ever worries you about their safety, you may have to pass it on to keep them safe, and you will always tell them if you do. Never promise the kind of secrecy a safeguarding duty would force you to break. Said once and then held, they do their job quietly. Repeated every week, they start to sound like a warning.

Handle the eye-roll honestly

Some of the class will find this cringe, and a few will say so out loud. Do not argue or oversell. A line that tends to work: "Fair enough if this feels a bit much. Try it anyway, it takes less time than it looks like it will, and you can always pass." Naming the awkwardness out loud tends to puncture it faster than ignoring it does.

You do not need to be an expert

You are not here because you have all this figured out yourself. Most of what makes this work is reading the opener as written and letting a silence sit for a moment before you fill it. If a student asks whether you actually do this too, an honest "I'm working on it, same as you" lands far better than pretending rest and acceptance are sorted for you. You are allowed to be a beginner in the room alongside them.

Adapting for SEND, EAL and accessibility

Many Wholebeing practices ask students to close their eyes, sit with stillness, breathe, or write privately. These are often the richest moments, and also the ones that need the most flexibility. None of this replaces your school's SEND provision or your knowledge of individual students, but it sits within the spirit of the SEND Code of Practice: a reasonable adjustment so a student can reach the same skill, not a lesser version of it.

Students who are non-speaking or selectively mute

Offer a silent equivalent for every spoken moment: a thumbs signal, a written word, or a card held up. Pass is always allowed for every student, and it costs nothing to make that visibly true for the student who relies on it most.

EAL students

Offer a language-light entry point alongside the discussion: a single word, an emoji, or pointing to an image rather than a full sentence. Pre-teach two or three key words for the lesson where you can, so students are not decoding new vocabulary and a new idea at once.

Sensory considerations

Eyes-closed is always optional, never required. Offer a soft downward gaze or a fixed point to look at instead, and say so before you start. Some students find quiet uncomfortable rather than calming, so a fidget object or a slightly shorter stillness usually works better than pushing through.

Private journalling and processing time

Not every student finds a blank page easy. Offer drawing, a single word, or choosing not to write at all as equally valid, and say this before the reflect section starts. Build in a few extra seconds of quiet before you expect a response. What looks like disengagement is often just a student still thinking it through.

A note home for parents and guardians

Not every lesson needs a note home, but a short line reassures parents who see "Wholebeing" on a timetable and are not quite sure what it means. Keep it brief and neutral: an ordinary school update, not a clinical report. The template has two merge fields so it works for any lesson.

Notes home are not the norm everywhere. If written notes to families are unusual in your context, the same message works as a short verbal mention at pick-up, a line in an existing family channel or group, or a comment at a parent evening. Share it in the language families actually use at home, and let the tone stay what it is here: an ordinary update, not an alert.

Subject: Today's Wholebeing lesson: {{lesson title}}

Hello,

In today's Wholebeing lesson, your child's class spent some time on the skill of {{skill}}. Wholebeing lessons sit within our wider pastoral programme and cover practical skills such as listening well, managing stress, resting properly, and getting along with others. They are discussion-based rather than therapy. Nobody is asked to share anything they would rather keep private, and there is no test or grade.

If you would like to know more about what we cover, or have any questions about today's lesson, please do get in touch.

Best wishes,
{{teacher name}}

Run it as a 15-minute staff-meeting opener

A short opener for a department or team, using the self-reflection tool or a single practice card. Use it once before a busy term, or as a regular slot.

Frame it for the adults in the room

Open by saying plainly that these fifteen minutes are for the staff in the room and add nothing to anyone's planning: "These fifteen minutes are just for us. Nobody is being trained to teach anything." Adults switch off fast when they sense they are about to be handed more work.

Low-disclosure applies to adults too

The same ground rule that runs through every classroom practice holds here: pass is always allowed, and nothing shared needs to be personal. Staff are as entitled to a quiet pass as any thirteen-year-old, and saying so at the start helps the room relax.

Run of show

• 2 min. Frame it, as above. Choose either /reflect on a shared screen or one printed practice card per table.
• 8 min. Work through /reflect together on a single skill, pausing to let people sit with each statement privately, or read a practice card aloud and follow its steps, in pairs or as a whole room.
• 3 min. A quiet minute. No feedback round, no reporting back. What people noticed is theirs to keep.
• 2 min. Close gently, without a debrief or a list of takeaways.

Something plain works best to close: "That's it for today. No need to say anything about it if you don't want to." Let people leave in the same quiet they arrived in.

Adapting Wholebeing to your context

These lessons were written to travel. The situations are ordinary and human, the structures are light, and every pack includes an editable DOCX so you can make a lesson yours. A few principles help the adaptation land well.

Translate the school, not just the words

Where a lesson says form time, read advisory, homeroom, or registration. An assembly is any whole-school or large-group gathering. A head of year or form tutor is whichever adult holds pastoral care for a student in your system. The curriculum links panel in each lesson speaks nine systems; pick yours once and it remembers.

Make the examples yours

Swap scenario details for ones your students recognise: local names, local places, the sports and seasons of your region. Keep the emotional shape of the scenario, change its costume. The editable lesson plan (DOCX) in each pack is the intended vehicle for this.

Let culture shape the how

In more collectivist settings, "notice for yourself" can become "notice as a group"; pair-shares can become family or community reflections; individual journalling can become a quiet minute before a shared word. Faith and secular contexts alike can hold these practices: nothing here requires any belief, and stillness and care have a home in every tradition.

Large classes and low-resource settings

Every practice works with nothing but voices and bodies: where a lesson says paper or cards, a shared board and a spoken version do the same job. For classes of 40 or more, run pair work as row work and whip-rounds as a show of hands plus three voices.

What should not be adapted away

Three things are the spine, whatever the context: pass is always allowed, and nobody explains why; nothing invites a student to disclose something painful in front of the room; and anything heavy goes to your school's usual safeguarding or pastoral route rather than being processed in the lesson. If an adaptation would bend one of these, adapt something else.