An example of practice: Ormiston Six Villages Academy

Ormiston Six Villages Academy is a semi-rural secondary school in the Arun district of West Sussex. The school has about 690 pupils aged 11 to 16. It has a lower-than-average number of pupils with Education, Health and Care Plans, but a higher-than-average number who receive special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) support.

Lou May is the director of learning for Year 10 and teaches maths. She studied for a Master’s at the University of Chichester. During her course, she learned about negativity bias. She then tried a project with one of her maths classes. She noticed that some girls in the class often thought in negative ways and felt stuck in these patterns.

Lou used research about negative thinking to help her plan her work. She created a simple gratitude diary. She asked the pupils to write in it each day and think about good things that had happened. From what she saw and heard, the pupils began to think in more positive ways and to look more to the world around them.

Many studies show a clear link between gratitude and feeling better. A study by Cripps (2019) found that pupils who kept a gratitude diary felt better than those who just wrote about their day. Their anxiety went down and they felt they belonged more at school.

At West Sussex, Dr Jess Millington, an Educational Psychologist, did her own research in schools. She found similar results. When pupils practised gratitude often, their mood improved and they felt a stronger sense of belonging at school.

After her small project at her previous school, Lou continued this work when she moved to Ormiston Six Villages Academy (OSVA). She introduced the idea of gratitude to all pupils in assemblies. She showed them the gratitude diaries she had made. Pupils could choose from 2 designs and collect a diary from Lou if they wanted one.

The diaries were simple and easy to use. They asked these 3 questions:

1. Today was a good day because…
2. 3 things I am proud of today:
3. The person who made me feel good today was…

Lou told pupils they did not have to talk about what they wrote. When they asked for a diary, she only asked one question: “Which design would you prefer?”

Staff have seen that pupils who use the diaries think in more positive ways. This matches a model by Fredrickson (2004). The model shows that when people notice more good things, they start to feel better and this can grow over time.

The school plans to keep using the gratitude diaries in a simple way and pupils can choose if they want to use them. They want to keep the system easy. The school may also look at using gratitude diaries with staff, as studies show they can help adults feel better too.

Our advice for schools is:

• don’t over-complicate it, simple is better
• pupils do not need to share the experiences they are grateful for to make the intervention effective
• introducing the activity in assemblies raises awareness of the importance of positive emotions building
• for a copy of the gratitude journals created by Lou, she can be contacted at lmy@ormistonsixvillages.org.uk