NIHR
University of Exeter
Tools for Schools
Feeling Good



Feeling Good

Welcome to the main page for the Feeling Good module. This module is all about supporting the toolkit student (and your other students) to feel valued and included every day in your classroom.

Browse and select the strategies in this module below:

Flip it

This strategy can go along with Catch them out [being good]. It’s about understanding how things can be re-worded to support positive language, why this is important, and some practice for you to become a pro at flipping negatives into positives!

  • Teacher activity
  • Everyday use with toolkit student

It’s good to be me

This activity is to help your students to understand that everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and that this variety is good and that we need not be critical of people’s individual weaknesses

  • Classroom activity
  • Gathering ideas 

Strong influencer

This strategy is to support you to identify constructive ways in which you can let out the frustration you may feel with managing students who can behave in challenging ways

  • Teacher activity
  • Gathering ideas

Equal contributions

This strategy is to give you ideas about how you can build in contributions from a lot of different students with different needs so that everyone’s voice is heard and your classroom is as inclusive as it can be. It’s about promoting and modelling positive socially inclusive behaviour, and supporting children with individual differences to be an equal peer contributor

  • Teacher planning
  • Everyday use with toolkit student

Catch them out [being good]

This strategy is to support you to give the toolkit student more positive feedback. It requires you to think positively about changes that you can make too!

  • Classroom guidelines
  • One-off that can be re-used

Learning my way every day

This strategy is about finding different ways for students to demonstrate their learning, it will be useful for students who struggle to complete work in the format that is usually used for the class

  • Teacher planning activity
  • Everyday use with toolkit student

Friendship across the ages

Children who struggle with being impulsive, over-active or concentrating may make friends or bonds with people who are different in age to them- be it adults, older or younger children. This strategy is to get you thinking about who the social networks are for the toolkit student.

  • Classroom activity
  • Teacher activity


How did we make these strategies?