Our Experience
For more than 20 years, WhyTry has led the way with practical and effective resources to help you motivate pupils, address mental health needs, and follow a trauma-informed approach to building resilience in every pupil.
Incorporating The WhyTry Approach
The WhyTry Programme is not just a set of tools and resources to teach life skills; it’s an approach to motivating even the most difficult-to-reach pupils. Our training focuses on helping staff build skills that are key to pupil engagement and following our proven model of teaching resilience to all pupils.
OfSTED Inspection Framework
See how our approach maps with OfSTED Inspection Framework and one Local Authority Continuum of Need
Teaching the skills of resilience
Our approach and tools help pupils master the skills they need to succeed at school, home, and in life.
Curriculum for primary and secondary pupils:
The WhyTry curriculum is cross Key Stage. The key concepts are consistent throughout the approach. Each key concept aligns with the PSHE programme of study core themes, including for pupils with SEND. This ensures inclusion within the group or class for pupils who are likely to learn at different rates and therefore require different levels and types of support from teachers to succeed. This promotes opportunities for adaptive teaching.
Flexible, online toolkits & detailed lesson plans
The WhyTry approach has a proven track record. Resources, designed by a team of professionals from across the Children’s Workforce, ensure that schools/colleges adopting the approach are not putting further expectations on planning time for staff. Flexible lesson plans are available in our toolkits which can be used when teaching a specific concept that complements your school curriculum.
Evidence-based programmes and interventions
The WhyTry approach is a trauma-informed practice. It is effective and can benefit both children who are trauma survivors and those still living with trauma. For children who are trauma survivors, the WhyTry approach brings hope, empowerment, and support that is not re-traumatizing.
Engaging activities and multimedia
Adaptive teaching through the use of imagery, music, games, and literature ensures all learning styles and preferences are included. Full training is given on the use of all resources. Our online toolkit includes full teacher manuals offering reminders and support for ECTs. Our toolkits include book lists, playlists, video resources, activity guides, and more.
The WhyTry Approach
Along with these resources, we provide training on working with pupils facing challenges, dealing with trauma, and experiencing adversity in their lives. We’ll train your teachers and support staff to implement our tools in a way that engages pupils at their stage of development and motivates them to take an interest in their success.
Supporting a Community
WhyTry is a team of professionals dedicated to collaboration and building a community focused on emotional resilience and pupil wellbeing. To this end, we offer many free resources and tools to establish our vision, including:
Our Webinar Series
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These webinars are a great resource for looking at how others who, although in a different place, are experiencing the same challenges as you are. Through discussions with a range of professionals from the Children’s Workforce, opportunities to look at how, here at WhyTry, we continue to develop our approach to reflect the current and most challenging barriers to learning.
If you are interested in joining us in a brand new UK webinar, sign up here.
The Parent Guide to Resilience
The Parent’s Guide to Resilience is a resource to help parents and families build resilience in the home.
As part of an Early Help Assessment or other identified work with Parents. This resource is a way of offering children a consistent approach to developing their resilience. Parents can use this resource independently or in collaboration with a family support worker or other family support professional.
Find out more
Schedule a Demo
Have questions? Speak with a WhyTry UK representative to get answers, learn about individual and school license pricing, and see how WhyTry could work for you!
The WhyTry Programme
WhyTry is a flexible toolkit and curriculum for Key Stages 1 – 4. It provides simple, hands-on strategies and resources to help motivate unmotivated pupils, supports pupils with trauma, improves engagement, and increases academic success. The idea is straightforward: teach social and emotional education to pupils in a way they can understand and remember.
Through your school’s intent to support your pupils to develop in many aspects of their lives, the WhyTry approach utilises a series of ten visual analogies that teach essential life skills, including:
Improved decision making
Children can begin to safeguard themselves if empowered in their decision-making. Approaching the questions of peer pressure, poor adult role models and different aspirations from those of their family can be difficult to teach. Our research-based approach ensures that your staff are equipped with the skills and resources to confidently undertake this role, teaching them to understand how to engage with society positively through their resilience.
Dealing with Peer Pressure
The most difficult aspect of Personal Development for many pupils. Pupils who feel isolated and are already difficult to reach rely on their ‘friends’. The WhyTry approach develops pupils’ confidence, resilience and knowledge to keep themselves mentally healthy, recognise peer influence, and develop strategies for managing it.
Emotional regulation and impulse control
Unregulated behaviour, inappropriate responses or lack of impulse control can indicate undiagnosed SEND. However, they can also be behaviours which are developed as part of immaturity or unmet needs. The WhyTry approach teaches children how to manage emotions which results in an increase in controlling impulses and regulating behaviour.
Obeying laws and rules
Promoting British values is one of the ways that schools protect pupils from the risk of radicalisation and meet their legal duty to safeguard children. The WhyTry approach resource ‘Lifting the Weight’ teaches pupils that living by laws and rules develops their self-discipline..
Valuing hard work
By learning how to value ‘hard work’, we begin to develop pupils’ motivation and positive attitudes to learning. Developing positive attitudes can also have a longer-term impact on how pupils approach learning further on in their educational career.
Plugging in to support systems
Your school will offer a host of opportunities, experiences, and support and help pupils develop in many diverse aspects of their lives. Yet, there are some pupils who don’t access them. The WhyTry approach teaches children to see how accessing those systems and accepting help gives them the power to create or strengthen their support system.
Having a future vision
The WhyTry approach supports readiness for the next phase of education, training or employment. It teaches pupils how to identify their goals and the key skills needed to reach them.
The WhyTry toolkit and Curriculum
The WhyTry Programme can be used as a flexible toolkit for 1:1, small groups or as a classroom curriculum taught for a term or school year. To schedule a demo of our
complete toolkit and implementation model, go to:
See what educators have to say about WhyTry.
For over 20 years, WhyTry has inspired students to discover freedom, opportunity, and self-respect. Here’s what they say about our pupil wellness and resilience programmes.
“We implemented this program through a small group with 20 girls. To select these 20 girls, we identified them as leaders in our building who were not leading in the most positive ways. I have to say, the hands-on activities were perfect in portraying the message, and we had so many great discussions as a result. In fact, we saw a measurable change with our group. Our students made much better decisions going forward. These changes occurred as a result of the group and the WhyTry materials.”
“WhyTry gives them the vocabulary that my class last year lacked because the program is so strong with giving them the tools and the words to describe how they’re feeling.”
“Very, very well done and organized, this program is incredibly complete and well thought out, masterfully scope and sequenced, it’s all here, totally visual and participatory. There is a very solid base to this “pyramid.” If presented to kids (with full fidelity) we will see them attain greater success.”
