Sessions are built around restorative practice, using the same 'affective questions' approach used in restorative conferencing in UK schools, combined with structured perspective-taking and friendship-skills activities. The module follows the DfE's Preventing and tackling bullying advice for schools, and supports the respectful-relationships expectations assessed under Ofsted's attendance and behaviour, and personal development and well-being, evaluation areas.
Objective: Pupil can describe a conflict from their own perspective, real or made up, without starting from blame.
Check-in: 1. Start with something unrelated — what they are into, how the week went. 2. Say plainly that today is not about deciding who was in the wrong. 3. A pupil who thinks they are on trial will give you nothing useful. 4. Say what happens to what they tell you: you keep notes, and the plan at the end goes to staff they agree to. If something worries you about their safety you have to pass it on, and you would tell them who to.
Input: 1. Ask: 'is there a fall-out with someone that's still on your mind?' 2. If nothing comes, use a smaller one, or make one up. It works the same. 3. Show the restorative question prompt card.
Activity: 1. Say you will not be correcting their answers. 2. Read the four questions aloud, then work through them one at a time on the situation from the input. 3. Leave a silence after each — the first answer is rarely the full one. 4. Note what they say in the box below, in their words, without taking sides.
Reflect: 1. Ask: 'if the other person could understand one thing about your side, what would it be?' 2. Tell them to hold on to that — you will come back to it next week.
Watch for: Keep this session focused on the pupil's own experience — perspective-taking on the other party comes later, so do not rush it. A made-up fall-out does the job as well as a real one; the structure is what is being learnt, and a pupil with nothing recent is not a session without content.
Parent/carer take-home: Ask what happened using 'what happened, and how did that feel?' rather than 'whose fault was it?'.
You're seeing week 1 in full. The remaining 5 sessions, along with the printable resource packs, are available once you have an account.
Schools can start a free three-week pilot with up to 3 mentor seats and 10 pupils. No card required.