Positive Behaviour Management
Here at Warstones, we aim for a calm and caring ethos where kindness is at the centre of everything that we do. We try to ensure that our children make the right choices by using our 3B's of Be Safe, Be Respectful and Be Responsible.
By using these 3B's on a regular basis, we teach our children not only how to behave within school, but how to be a positive citizen within our community.
A Restorative Approach
“You can be strict without being nasty, maintain boundaries without cruelty and correct children without aggression” (Paul Dix)
At Warstones, we work hard to use a restorative approach when it comes to behavioural incidents. This places the focus on resolving conflict and repairing harm by talking to everyone involved, getting them to explain their feelings and reasons for behaving the way they are.
By asking a set of questions, the goal is to reach a clear understanding of everyone’s feelings, and find a resolution that everyone can agree to. There’s less of a focus on punishment and sanctions when you use restorative practice.
Restorative approaches are effective at reducing bullying, based on results from research into anti-bullying strategies carried out by the Department for Education (section 4.3).
Praise and Reward
We have many ways in which we praise our children and we offer pupils rewards for giving maximum effort in trying to be an excellent school citizen.
In Early Years we follow the good to be green system. Sanctions are detailed in the below flow chart. Positive praise, including a weekly star of the week, is shared with parents, through the tapestry app. We also have weekly class assemblies in the Autumn and Spring term, with certificates given out for excellent behaviour and outstanding contributions. In the Summer term, Reception join KS1 for a praise assembly, where these certificates are given out. Immediate rewards, such as stickers are used to motivate and promote good behaviour.
In Key Stages One and Two we offer children the chance of a 30 minute Golden Time on a Friday where they take part in carefully planned activities ranging from arts and crafts, board games, films, iPad time and much, much more.
We also give children the chance to earn House Points throughout the year. House points are awarded for many things such as excellent effort with work, brilliant manners, being a good friend etc. When a House Point is awarded, a physical token is given to the child to go and place in the class box. This then gets collected to add to larger key stage boxes. At the end of each half term, the winning house gets a treat/prize and the systemis reset.
Special Golden House Points are awarded by members of the Senior Leadership Team for ‘above and beyond’ behaviour. These are larger tokens that are worth double.
Consequences
Occasionally, some of our children require reminders of what is expected of them. We have aim for a consistent approach to behaviour across the school so tat our children understand what is expected of them and what consequences to expect should they make the wrong choices.
For our younger children, we offer more 'warnings' than we do with our older, more responsible pupils. We understand that every child is unique so we do adapt our flowchart on occasions to ensure that we get the absolute best out of our children.
Children can often fall out during the school day and we try to solve these issues as and when they occur following our behaviour policy. Bullying is when incidents occur with the same children over a prolonged period of time. If incidents do occur, we follow our anti-bullying policy. These are rare events and are dealt with swiftly by all staff involved.
