Our Fantastic Buddies
At St Mary’s, we ensure that everyone feels valued and happy at school. We have very kind and caring children here and some of our older children have taken on the responsibility of being a Buddy to our younger children. This is a great opportunity for them to use their gifts and talents to help others within our school community. Being a Buddy involves providing helpful support, encouraging confidence and offering emotional support and friendship to others.
Through our Buddy scheme our older buddies develop skills in:
- Listening, communication, problem solving and conflict management.
- Establishing caring and meaningful relationships with their peers.
- Developing and enhancing leadership, self-esteem and personal skills.
- Operating effectively as part of a team.
- Taking more responsibility for the quality of life in our school.
- Finding solutions to problems.
- Supporting younger children to feel worthy of special attention and kindness.
Following training sessions, each Buddy is assigned a younger child who may need a friend to help them in school for a variety of reasons. Each week, the Buddies have lunch with their younger friend and then join them on the playground to play fun and exciting games. This helps them to engage with their peers and develop positive relationships.
- By having an older Buddy, our younger children benefit in many ways. Some of these include:
- Feeling calmer and less anxious in new situations.
- Gaining confidence and increasing in self-esteem.
- Understanding how to express their feelings.
- Feeling more trusting towards others.
- Feeling more comfortable around older children.
- Adjusting to new environments.
- Having a positive role model to look up to.
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