Promoting Positive Behaviours

Research suggests that especially with primary aged children, reaffirming positive behaviour that the child is already doing, is cognitively far easier to conceptualise than telling the child to behave in a way that they are not currently doing. At Heatherlands Primary School we log over 500,000 behaviours and 85% of them are positive. We wrote a ‘Building Positive Relationships Policy’, which puts a greater emphasis on praise and celebration, than warnings and sanctions.

Using Trackit Lights, we have been able to customise our green (good) behaviours icons to the school values - Respect, Resilience, Motivation, Aspiration and Independence, as well as other positive behaviours such as contributing well and working hard. These visual icons are displayed on the board every time a positive behaviour and class point is awarded to a pupil. This gives the pupils instant recognition for positive behaviour and helps them continuously visualise, internalise and memorise the school values and learning behaviours. At the same time, the behaviour is automatically logged into the easy to use school-wide behaviour tracker which tracks everything. 

Restorative conferences

At Heatherlands, if behaviour escalates beyond low-level, the class teacher or senior leader sits with a pupil and guides them through a restorative conference. The focus is to help the child reflect on the thoughts and feelings that are driving the behaviour, but also the consequences of their behaviour and how it has affected others. The goal is to identify any needs of the pupil, identify strategies to resolve and repair the issue and equip the pupil with the self-awareness to regulate their own behaviour moving forwards.

Many schools see the same pupils receiving the same sanctions, for the same behaviours week after week highlighting that the interventions in place aren’t working for that child. At Heatherlands though, we have reduced the amount of restorative conversations by up to 75% in some year groups. Across the whole school we reduced restorative conversations from 347 in a term, to 15 when comparing this year’s statistics with last years.

Using Trackit Lights, the senior leaders conducting restorative conversations can see every low-level behaviour logged in class, or break times, and how it has escalated. They can see the time of each log, what the specific behaviour was. Also graphs, trends and statistics highlight patterns in behaviour across days, weeks, months and even years and notes regarding what the triggers and motives were can be viewed which then directly informs the restorative conversation.

“All behaviour is an attempt to meet a need and can be seen as a form of communication” – quoted from the Heatherlands Primary School building relationships policy.

Trackit Lights also helps senior leaders do termly analysis that visually highlights any pupils who have high levels of challenging behaviour and then they are able to put additional interventions in place such as individual behaviour plans (IBPs), meetings with parents, and follow up meetings to reflect on strategies. This also provides Ofsted with evidence that the school knows exactly where any problem areas are and that the school is responding accordingly.

Rewards

Every time a pupil is given a class point on the board in their lessons, it is automatically added to their house points in Trackit Lights. The leading house gets recognition in assembly every half term. When a pupil earns 50, 100, 200 and 250 points they receive bronze, silver, gold and the ‘Head teachers award’ certificates which are generated automatically in Trackit Lights and can be printed at a click of a button. Trackit Lights also visually identifies pupils who have had constant good behaviour and have not received any sanctions for a specific date range. This makes sure that it is not just pupils who are overtly ‘trying’ to behave in the moment who get recognition, but also the pupils who never disturb the class but often go unnoticed. The school also makes use of ‘value stickers’, visiting other teachers and the Headteacher for praise, Golden Time, postcards home and wristbands.

Sanctions

When a pupil’s behaviour does need challenging, teachers can use Trackit Lights to log low-level behaviour and give visual warnings to help the pupil visualise the behaviour policy and the expectations of the classroom. When challenging behaviour is logged, senior leaders and behaviour support can see this instantly appear in their reports and email notifications inform them of the pupil, class and behaviour. SLT may then visit the class and have a restorative chat to nip the behaviour in the bud and stop it escalating any further if necessary. This provides teachers with extra support and it allows the behaviour to be dealt with more restoratively before reaching the point of a sanction.

The school uses sanctions as a last resort, but avoids them if other strategies can be used. Sanctions can include moving seats within the class, loss of Golden Time, referral to the year leader or a restorative reflection time with a member of SLT.