Ready, Respectful, Safe

How do we teach Ready, Respectful and Safe choices?

Every opportunity is a learning opportunity, and this includes behaviour.

There are many things that are an essential part of the day at Haughmond Federation which contribute to teaching good behaviour. This involves teaching good manners and social awareness too. Making good choices is taught through a variety of methods including modelling, R.R.S conversations, our values, and restorative conversations to name a few. Everyone is responsible for teaching good behaviour choices in our Federation.

Here are our strategies:

The start and end of the day

Our staff meet and greet the children at the start of the day and then later say goodbye, leading them off site, safely. The start of the day is especially important because it gives our children a warm welcome and sense of belonging. From this point, staff can observe moods and feelings. All main exits are supervised by staff

During lessons

During lessons, teachers will refer to our behaviour rule phrase, ‘Ready, Respectful and Safe’. They will observe these excellent choices and award child Class Dojo’s and/or add their name to the class Recognition board. Teachers are free to organise the layout of their class and the seating arrangements to enable the best learning opportunities. When children are in transition and move from their class to other parts of the school building, they are expected to show ‘Lovely Lines’ and ‘Fantastic Walking’. Children are encouraged to have conversations around helpful and unhelpful behaviours for learning, for example, applying active listening, supporting each other in their learning, persevering with a challenge, Teachers explicitly teach and model what good learning behaviours are.

At the start of the week, children will either watch a short video or take part in a discussion about the behaviour focus for the week ahead. Each week we focus on either ‘Ready, Respectful or Safe’ choices to maintain high standards of behaviour. It is our aim to ensure all children can clearly articulate what these learning behaviours look like.

Recognition

Each day class teachers seek to identify which children go above and beyond to demonstrated good choices. The child’s name will be added to the recognition board in class for all to see and this also equates to earning a Class Dojo.

Class Dojo is the tool we use to reward the children for their choices. The children are rewarded with online stickers when they demonstrate ’Ready, Respectful and Safe’ choices, read at home and make an excellent effort with their work. Each week children are identified for leading the way and are awarded with praise in either assembly or class and given a special sticker, verbal praise and their parents also receive a letter from SLT to celebrate these choices.

Our Heads of School lead either a Sunshine Assembly or and Achievement assembly to recognise effort and standards of work. Children receive a special sticker and a mini certificate card to keep as a memento of their achievement.

Break and lunch time

Children are encouraged to be Respectful and Safe when playing or learning outdoors. Children are aware of what Safe choices look like outdoors too. Play Leaders supervise their fun at break time and they are always ready to step in and help the children with any difficulty. We want our children to take risks but always encourage them to focus on respectful and safe choices as they do so. During lunchtime, we ask that our children consider displaying good manners, wait their turn, eat well and tidy afterwards. When the whistle is blown at the end of break times, we expect our children to be ‘Ready’ to walk to their class line – here, staff look for ‘Lovely Lines’ and then ‘Fantastic Walking’ into class.

Deliberate ‘Botheredness’

Building positive relationships with children takes dedicated time but our staff go above and beyond to achieve this. It can be witnessed every day, all over the school site. An example of this may be a thoughtful welcoming comment as the child enters the class, a compliment about how smart they look in uniform looks, how fantastically they walking in line or how much effort was placed into a piece of written work or the simple act of remembering: did you enjoy the sleepover at the weekend? All staff do this so easily and the impact is extremely powerful. This allows our team to build, sustain and maintain a positive rapport with our children.

An incident

If an incident occurs, which is inevitable in a school setting, staff are well trained to work strategically to separate and de-escalate situations. Communication is key, so we encourage the children to have their say and get things off their chest. When they can, they are encouraged to reflect on their contribution to the situation and a solution is found. This is often using Restorative Conversation scripts. Teachers manage incidents by referring to our Stages of Behaviour document and report concerns onto our CPOMs log. Appropriate actions are taken from this point. Children and teachers are fully supported by the Pastoral Team and SLT.

A new day

Every day is a fresh start. Staff work hard to make the children see that we are learning in every way, and it is not just about our lessons but how we conduct ourselves. A fresh start reinforces the power of forgiveness and restoring faith in the good choices we make.