Children returning to school following lockdown have experienced 5 losses (routine, opportunity, friendships (relationships and social interaction) structure and freedom and have lived through a collective trauma. These 5 losses can trigger the emergence emotionally of anxiety, trauma and bereavement in any child. The overall impact cannot be underestimated. It will cause a rapid erosion of the mental health state in our children.

The Recovery Curriculum is a construct that will be constructed around the needs of the children at Barwic Parade; it is written based upon 5 levers; relationships, community, a transparent curriculum, meta-cognition and space all of which are at the heart of everything Barwic Parade offers and adopts and extends the current ethos and principles of the school.

• Relationships – relationships that were thriving, may need to be invested in and restored. We need to plan for this to happen, not assume that it will. Reach out to greet them, use the relationships we build to cushion the discomfort of returning.

• Community – we must recognise that curriculum will have been based in the community for a long period of time. We need to listen to what has happened in this time, understand the needs of our community and engage them in the transitioning of learning back into school.

• Transparent curriculum – all of our students will feel like they have lost time in learning and we must show them how we are addressing these gaps, consulting and co-constructing with our students to heal this sense of loss.

• Meta-Cognition - in different environments, students will have been learning in different ways. It is vital that we make the skills for learning in a school environment explicit to our students to reskill and rebuild their confidence as learners.

•  Space- to be, to rediscover self, and to find their voice on learning.

The intention of a Recovery Curriculum is to provide opportunities to create a compassionate and collected classroom by focussing on rebuilding relationships and a sense of community, providing a space to re-establish a sense of self and to relearn behaviour for learning skills. The focus will be gently returning to some semblance of routine whilst enabling free- play, outdoor exploration and physical development. In between and in addition to this there will be a programme of activities that all teachers will plan into each and every day. These activities compliment the Thrive programme that Barwic Parade already has robustly in place and are centred on relationships and meaningful engagements. The Recovery Curriculum gives Teachers at Barwic Parade the space, agency and autonomy to meet the needs of the children within their classes upon their return to school after the Pandemic.