Healthy Minds Compact Strengthening
Strengthening reflects an important developmental shift.
As children become increasingly able to think about their own thinking, consider different perspectives and understand situations in greater depth, they move from learning individual psychological fitness skills towards greater reflection, agency and application.
The ten lessons are: 1. Strengths: Me at My Best Recognising strengths through real evidence and considering how they can support future situations. 2. Understanding Emotions Developing emotional awareness and understanding how emotions can appear through body sensations, thoughts and behaviour. 3. Listening to Understand Practising listening as an active psychological fitness, communication and relationship skill. 4. When Are Emotions Helpful or Unhelpful? Understanding emotions in context and considering what an emotion may be communicating. 5. The Stories Our Brains Tell Separating observable facts from the interpretation the brain creates and checking thinking against evidence. 6. Choosing Optimism Practising realistic optimism by considering other possibilities, useful next steps and what is within our control. 7. Celebrating My Strengths Recognising strengths as resources that can be used deliberately in different situations. 8. Sleep and Mental Fitness Understanding how sleep supports learning, memory, emotional regulation, growth and recovery. 9. Create a Mental Fitness Campaign Bringing psychological fitness learning together and using it to create something useful for others. 10. Share a Mental Fitness Campaign Using collaboration, communication and pupil voice to share psychological fitness learning beyond the individual.
Developmental focus Awareness → Understanding → Flexibility → Choice → Agency → Application
Children increasingly understand themselves, make deliberate choices and apply psychological fitness in the world around them.
Lessons
10 lessons in this module.
Healthy Minds Compact: Strengthening - Strengths: Me at My Best
Pupils explore what they are like when they are at their best and learn to recognise strengths through real examples of what they do, rather than simply choosing labels. They identify qualities they bring to different situations and consider how those strengths could support them as they grow and move towards Year 7.
Healthy Minds Compact: Strengthening - Understanding Emotions
Pupils develop emotional awareness by recognising emotions as signals, expanding the language they use for feelings and noticing how emotions can show up through body sensations, thoughts and behaviour. They also explore how the same emotion can look different in different people.
Healthy Minds Compact: Strengthening - Listening to Understand
Pupils experience listening as an active psychological fitness skill. Through practical activities, they practise giving full attention, pausing before responding, noticing verbal and non-verbal cues and checking understanding. They explore how listening can strengthen communication, relationships, trust and leadership.
Healthy Minds Compact: Strengthening - When Are Emotions Helpful or Unhelpful?
Pupils explore emotions without judging them as good or bad. They consider what an emotion may be signalling, how it can protect, motivate or guide us, and when its impact might begin to get in the way of useful action. Through different situations, pupils learn that context matters.
Healthy Minds Compact: Strengthening - The Stories Our Brains Tell
Pupils discover that our brains do not simply record events — they interpret them. They learn to separate observable facts from the story the brain adds, recognise common ways thinking can jump ahead and practise checking evidence and asking, “What else could be true?” This helps pupils develop greater flexibility in their thinking and creates more choice about what they do next.
Healthy Minds Compact: Strengthening - Choosing Optimism
Pupils explore how different ways of interpreting the same situation can influence what we notice and what we do next. They learn that we may not choose our first thought, but we can learn to notice it, consider another perspective and look for what is possible or within our control. Optimism is taught as realistic hope — not pretending that difficulties are not real.
Healthy Minds Compact: Strengthening - Celebrating My Strengths
Pupils return to their strengths with greater depth. Rather than simply identifying strengths, they consider which qualities come naturally, where they have seen them in action and which strengths they might choose to use more deliberately in future situations. They practise recognising and appreciating strengths in themselves and others and begin to see strengths as resources they can draw on intentionally.
Healthy Minds Compact: Strengthening - Sleep and Mental Fitness
Pupils explore sleep as an important part of psychological fitness. They learn that the brain and body remain active during sleep and that sleep supports learning, memory, emotional regulation, growth and recovery. Pupils reflect on routines and realistic choices that may help prepare the body and brain for sleep, without blame or judgement.
Healthy Minds Compact: Strengthening - Create a Mental Fitness Campaign
Pupils bring together learning from across Strengthening and use it for a real purpose. Working collaboratively, they identify something about psychological fitness that could help others, define an audience and purpose, develop clear messages and create a realistic call to action. In doing so, pupils move from learning about psychological fitness to communicating and applying it.
Healthy Minds Compact: Strengthening - Share a Mental Fitness Campaign
Pupils complete and share their Mental Fitness campaigns, explain the thinking behind their choices and practise giving and receiving constructive feedback. The lesson celebrates collaboration, communication and pupil voice, reinforcing the idea that psychological fitness can strengthen not only the individual but also the people and environments around them.