Zippy’s Friends for SEND at Evergreen School in Warwick

Kelly Higgs, Curriculum Improvement Lead for My Social and Emotional Well-being at Evergreen School Warwick - part of the University of Birmingham research project - shares her thoughts about how Zippy’s Friends for SEND has supported her pupils.

"At Evergreen School, we feel very positive about our school’s involvement with the Zippy’s Friends programme. Pupil engagement and enjoyment were high throughout the sessions, with a number of students cheering excitedly when told that we were going to be doing a Zippy’s Friends lesson today. The materials were interesting and relevant to the needs of our pupils and gave them useful strategies to develop their emotional literacy and regulation skills.

My own particular highlight came during Module 5, when topics of loss, change and death are covered in an extremely sensitive way. Just prior to delivering this module, one of the pupils in my class had experienced the death of a parent. He had become increasingly withdrawn and reluctant to join in with most of our classroom activities. However, when it came to Zippy’s Friends, he would come into our Circle Times, participate and actively contribute to the sessions. Over subsequent weeks we noticed a change in his behaviour and mood throughout his time at school and members of my staff team and I reflected that the work we had done within Zippy’s Friends had contributed significantly to an increase in his emotional wellbeing."