KS2 PSHE: Anxiety and stress – Operation Ouch!

Primary teaching resources > KS2 PSHE > Operation Ouch!

This series of videos taken from Operation Ouch! link to the statutory relationships and health education guidance, and the non-statutory PSHE programme of study.

As with all PSHE-related content,a safe teaching and learning environment should be established before class viewing. It is important to watch the video before viewing, to ensure it is suitable for your pupils and works within your curriculum planning.

Please ensure you have read the teacher guidance before using in the classroom

You may want to show the anxiety video, then the video about stress to demonstrate the techniques of breathing and body scanning as a way to calm anxiety.

Anxiety: video summary

This video begins with Dr. Chris and Dr. Xand engaging a group of schoolchildren in a discussion about anxiety. The children are encouraged to describe what anxiety feels like and to identify its physical symptoms. The doctors then explain why these symptoms occur, helping to build children's understanding of the connection between physical and mental health.

The video also introduces practical strategies for managing anxiety in the moment, such as breathing exercises and the importance of talking to a trusted adult. To conclude, the video offers proactive tips for reducing anxiety, including the benefits of regular physical activity and good sleep habits.

Stress: video summary

In this video, Dr. Ronx's meditation session is suddenly interrupted by a stressful phone call. This sets the stage for a discussion with a group of schoolchildren about what stress feels like and how it can affect us.

Together, they explore a range of stress-busting strategies, with a particular focus on mindfulness. The children are guided through practical techniques, including a body scan meditation, to help them recognise and manage stress in a calm and focused way.

• Before watching the anxiety video, discuss the feeling of anxiety, and how it can make someone feel.

• Watch the video, then ask pupils to think of situations that might cause anxiety for different people. Remind them that people respond to different situations in different ways, and that some might experience anxiety while others don’t.

• Ask pupils to draw a person, or the outline of a body. Ask them to use the list of feelings associated with anxiety to indicate where in or on the body we might feel these things.

• As a class, discuss some ways of alleviating anxiety and ask pupils for their own top tips (if they want to, they can share ways that help for them). Why do they think these things help?

• Focus on the part of the video that describes how and why breathing can change when someone is anxious. Watch the Stress video to see how breathing and body scanning techniques can be used to help calm anxiety.

• Teach pupils how to use the techniques in the following ways:

  • Breathing: ask pupils to sit somewhere comfortable and close their eyes. Ask them to bring their attention to their own breathing and try to listen to it, and slow it down if they are breathing quickly. Then ask them to breathe in, counting to three slowly in their heads (or count out loud to help them), then breathe slowly out for a count of three. As they breathe they should imagine a balloon blowing up inside them, as suggested in the video. They could also pause for a moment at the top of the breath before letting it out. As pupils get more experienced at this technique you could vary the number of breaths, or the way they breathe (e.g. in slowly for three, out in one big breath or vice versa; breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth etc.).

  • Body scanning: again, ask pupils to sit somewhere comfortable and close their eyes, and listen to their own breathing. As they breathe, ask them to bring their attention to particular body. You could guide them in a particular order: for example, feet, knees, stomach, chest, fingers, hands, shoulders, neck, face, head, brain. Speak slowly and pause at each to allow pupils to focus on that body part before moving on to the next. Another way of doing this is to ask them to tense that body part, then completely relax it before moving on to the next. Afterwards, ask pupils to open their eyes and just observe how they feel. They can share these feelings if they wish.

  • It can be a good idea to regularly practice both techniques with the class so that pupils instinctively do it independently when they feel anxious.

You can watch more Operation Ouch! on iPlayer.