🏫 Designing the School Day with SEMH in Mind

How structure shapes regulation, connection, and capacity to learn.

👋 Welcome to SEMH Education!

Every week, I share insights, strategies, and tips from my experience working with children and professionals on social, emotional, and mental health (SEMH) in education. This week, we’re exploring different strategies to design every single day with SEMH in mind.

These tips and tricks will ensure that you are supporting all children, including those with SEN. This isn’t an exhaustive list but if you think I’ve missed something obvious, please drop it in the comments below!

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🤷 Why Does it Matter?

Think back to your last staff training day. The one where lunch was late, the agenda overran, or you didn’t get a proper break. By the afternoon, your head was spinning, your legs were restless, and your patience? Wearing thin.

Now imagine you’re 10 years old, have additional needs, didn’t sleep last night, and nobody explained why the timetable changed.

School structure matters, not just what we teach, but how we pace the day can significantly affect a child’s emotional regulation and readiness to learn. If a child isn’t in a learning-ready headspace, it doesn’t matter how good the lesson is, they won’t retain as much information as if they were learning-ready.

As adults, it’s our job to ensure things run as smoothly as possible. This isn’t always achievable, so explaining and adapting is important. The tips below will support all children when the unexpected happens and plans change!

🕰️ The Power of Pacing

How the flow of the day impacts nervous system regulation

Our nervous systems thrive on predictability and manageable demands. But traditional school timetables, packed, rigid, and fast-paced, often ignore how emotional regulation ebbs and flows.

For children with SEMH needs (and many without formal identification), poorly paced transitions, long periods of passive listening, or extended social exposure in unstructured settings (e.g., lunch, corridors) can quickly lead to dysregulation.

Try this:

• Front-load relational time: Build 10 minutes into the start of the day for a low-pressure connection. Check-ins, music, drawing, movement, whatever creates calm for your pupils.

• Alternate demands: Follow high-demand academic lessons with practical, movement-based, or creative sessions.

• Use regulation rhythms: Think “high-low-high”, placing less stimulating or regulating tasks between cognitively or socially intense ones.

👨‍🏫Own Experience: Without doubt, going from high-demand to high-demand lessons and/or having too much unstructured time in between lessons were the two main causes for children entering crisis in my previous settings.

In the last setting I taught in, we had 3 regulation breaks (15 mins each) every day. This sounds like a lot, but it was 100% worth it. Building in time for regulation throughout the day enabled the children to reset and refresh, ready for the next stint of learning. Without these breaks, their quality of work would’ve been worse and the frequency of behaviour-related incidents would’ve been much higher.

🌀 Sensory Breaks Are Not Rewards

They’re regulation strategies, and should be embedded, not earned

It’s still too common to see access to movement, quiet spaces, or sensory input framed as a privilege.

For many pupils with sensory processing needs or hyperarousal profiles, breaks are not a “nice to have.” They are necessary interventions that help maintain emotional control, engagement, and safety.

What this could look like:

• Planned sensory input: Timetabled “Regulation Stations”, e.g., push walls, fidget tools, wobble cushions, or quiet corners, used proactively.

• Movement breaks by design: Include 2–3 minute ‘micro-breaks’ every 20–30 minutes, especially in primary settings. In secondary, build 5-minute ‘reset moments’ between lessons for physical or sensory regulation.

• Outdoor time beyond playtime: Use safe, supervised outdoor movement (walk-and-talks, nature observation) as a structured part of the timetable.

Policy link: For CYP with EHCPs, especially those with sensory or SEMH needs, the provision of sensory breaks can be included as a specific intervention under Section F (Special Educational Provision).

👨‍🏫Own Experience: As long as you model how and when to take these breaks, the children will be able to access them. Just as with everything else you introduce or teach, bring these breaks in slowly, consolidate them and then introduce more as and when needed.

For example, I’d guess that after the lunchtime break is a trigger point for dysregulated children globally. They’ve just come back from (usually) an unstructured 30 minutes+ of play time. Then they are expected to go straight into learning when they’re not learning ready. Implementing a 10-15 minute regulation break here will dramatically decrease the behaviour incidents.

If you’re struggling for ideas, feel free to take some inspiration from these blogs: Here, Here and Here.

🌅 Flexible Starts: Soft Landings, Not Late Excuses

Rethinking morning routines for vulnerable learners

Early mornings can be flashpoints, especially for children navigating difficult home lives, sleep issues, or anxiety.

Schools that allow a flexible start for specific pupils often see improvements in attendance, well-being, and learning (Attendance Mentors Pilot - DfE, 2024).

Approaches to explore:

• Staggered entry: Allow some pupils a 15–30 minute window to enter school calmly, reducing pressure around punctuality.

• Quiet welcome spaces: Designate a room for pupils who struggle with sensory overwhelm in the playground or assembly. Include quiet activities, soft lighting, and trusted adults.

• Rolling start activities: Replace strict registration tasks with optional calming choices (reading, art, Lego, journaling).

These changes don’t need to lower expectations. They raise the bar for inclusion, meeting needs early to prevent escalation later.

👨‍🏫Own Experience: I’m going to do a further post on soft-starts and just how impactful they really are.

Having a calming activity for all children to take part in whenever they arrive at school is essential in my opinion. This provides a safe space for check-ins, allows you to explain the structure of the day to the child and pick up any issues that may arise throughout the day.

🚦Calm Transitions: More Than Just Moving Between Rooms

How the in-between moments shape the whole day

Transitions are often overlooked in behaviour support plans, yet they are one of the highest-risk times for emotional escalation.

Corridors, coat area, lesson changeovers, these moments can dysregulate and/or disorient children. There are easy things you can do to support children in these moments.

Build in buffer time:

• Add a two-minute breathing space at the end of each lesson.

• Use visual or auditory cues (music, timers, routines) to signal change.

• Designate "transition buddies" or adults to support pupils prone to anxiety or aggression during changes.

👨‍🏫Own Experience: I’ve talked previously about supporting children with SEMH needs through change here.

My top tip for this one is to model how to transition from 1 space to another or 1 lesson to another. It’s something that’s often overlooked but can make the day run 10x smoother! Some children need that extra guidance on how to change from one activity to another. Simple things, such as a specific song for transitions (or specific songs for what lesson is coming next) or transition buddies, can make the world of difference!

🪴 Reimagining the School Day is Inclusion Work

Not extra work. Not ‘special treatment.’ Just good practice.

Every child benefits from a school day that respects regulation needs, and offers flexibility where possible. But for our most vulnerable pupils, those with trauma, neurodivergence, or unmet SEMH needs, this is the difference between inclusion and exclusion.

So let’s design better days. Days that start gently, flow predictably, and build in room to breathe.

🪞 Reflective takeaway:

What one small change could you make to tomorrow’s timetable, in your class, your phase, or your whole school, that would make the day feel safer, calmer, or more manageable for a child who struggles?

📬 Did You Miss These?

Check out the blogs below, you might have missed these!

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