School Resource
How I Smashed a PlateAn interactive, therapeutic character-based story, to respond to feelings using healthy strategies, reducing stress behaviours, mapped across the PSHE curriculum.
A Message from the Main Character – River
I just want to play with my next-door friends, ride my bike and eat sausages. You can understand that, can’t you? When you read my story, you’ll get to know about me, my best friends, and the day I smashed a plate.
You don’t have to know it’s about when everything feels crazy, sounds become muffled and pictures blur.
You should know that my story is about me and my friends goofing about, reclaiming removed goods and getting totally overwhelmed by it all. You might want to know this eBook has puzzles to crack, finding objects, and choosing how the story goes. You will notice it even has a 5-minute film to enjoy.
I promise you will be totally satisfied with my story and interactive activities.
A COMPLETE PSHE Resource
Persuade Me…
Everybody can feel tired, frustrated, or perplexed about explosive behaviours. Considering solutions as you read and participate in a story together sounds appealing, doesn’t it?
This experiential and absorbing eBook for 5-10yrs old explores easy and effective therapeutic techniques that will support and empower children to learn how to deal with big emotions. The fictional main character, called River can even engage the reluctant reader.
This story taps into the child’s awareness, creating a sense of attunement. Ultimately, this story is about 3 children goofing about, playing, and having fun, until anger takes over.
It’s good to know you influence child development. You can decide to playfully explore feelings to stretch tolerance levels and reduce the risk of stress (challenging) behaviours. The health benefits are incredible. A therapeutic deep dive into feelings will encourage a calm, alert, and focused child, supporting attachment patterns. Mental health, social, and pro-social dexterity allow flexibility in people’s lives.
A tale of friendship, play, and revealing the complexity of emotions teaches children to recognise their feelings with the confidence to respond appropriately. Uncle Matt patiently responds to River with innovative and creative alternative ways that help River respond to their feelings. It is a gift to well-being and resilience.
An eBook about feelings and therapeutic techniques can grip and excite any child. It’s even better that this story cleverly uses linguistics to connect the reader’s experiences with the characters, thus establishing the possibility for the reader to use therapeutic behaviour support techniques.
It is guaranteed that the interactive activities, a 5-minute film on neuroscience, normalising a child who lives with their uncle, and giving the reader choices will increase their engagement, and they will want to return to the eBook to learn even more about stress and practical solutions.
Spiral PSHE Curriculum
A student can focus on learning when they are regulated. Building healthy coping skills and resilience enable a student to be curious and engage with their surroundings.
How I Smashed a Plate embeds the PSHE Curriculum and Leeds MindMate Curriculum. It also comes with a spiral year 3 and a year 4 scheme of work with adaptations to be inclusive for the 12-lesson plans.
How to Use the eBook
Throughout the story, the reader can enjoy interactive activities to learn even more about themselves when experiencing stress. The reader will discover there are two-story pathways and numerous activities to enjoy. It’s important that the reader returns many times to learn many things.
In addition, it’s advantageous to spend time exploring the themes using the lesson plans to understand how feelings drive behaviours. Reading How I Smashed a Plate together, will use your relationship to attune, and plan ways to co-regulate feelings.
Once your school purchases How I Smashed a Plate, the school will access the eBook across the whole school to be used on the Smartboard, on any electronic device and access to Raising Children Together Resource Library.
Reluctant Readers
“People with poor literacy skills earn 12% less than those with good literacy skills”
The statistic above is shocking. How I Smashed a Plate methodology arose when considering children who have experienced adversity in their lives. According to Digital NHS statistics, in 2022, more than 400,000 children a month are being treated for mental health problems. The National Literacy Trust states:
“Low literacy means children are much more likely to struggle with their GCSEs, and more likely to end up unemployed by their 30s”
Children who experience stress more often spend more time learning how to survive those challenges and adversities. They spend less time in their pre-frontal cortex, being curious and therefore increasing the risk of being reluctant to read.
Children who are reluctant to read have not found the right reading material for them yet. When a child is relaxed and has the right kind of resources, the child will soon enjoy reading.
Please be aware blue light can affect a child’s ability to fall asleep. This eBook should be used throughout the day and as family time, not directly before bed.
ADAPTATIONS to be Inclusive
It’s important to meet the needs of all learners in a classroom. Each lesson plan is designed using How I Smashed a Plate and has alternative suggestions to be as inclusive as possible. Your expertise and relationship with your students will help to adapt any lesson plan even further to meet their needs. It is good to remember scaffolding strategies, daily schedules, visual reference points (that are included in the resources), regulation time (raising children together can provide a regulation toolkit), and resources to recall instructions that provide key topic vocabulary.
Experiential Learning
You learn to respond to feelings through experiences so this can be tricky in a classroom setting. How I Smashed a Plate uses the student’s empathy to experience River’s feelings (a safe technique to explore feelings in a classroom) to practically explore healthy approaches to those feelings. The PSHE lessons are designed to safely practice skills and develop neural pathways to call upon when needed. How I Smashed a Plate is designed for maximum interaction, asking students to participate in reading, pressing the next button on the smartboard, and of course interacting with the inbuilt activities support play and playful learning whilst focusing on feelings, responding to those feelings that develop healthy behaviours to stress.
Reflecting with peers, encouraging mentorship, co-delivery and goal setting, and embedded in the lessons to utilise experiential learning. How I Smashed a Plate PSHE learning resource dovetails seamlessly with those schools that are using restorative practice principles.
EVIDENCE-BASED Research
Raising Children Using Research
How I Smashed a Plate is written using attachment and behaviour support strategies. If you are interested in the research, you can read any of Raising Children Together’s articles.