Behaviour Expectations

Our vision is that children, through our nurturing support and positive behaviour management strategies:

• are empowered to take control of their own learning and behaviour to persevere through faith in their potential
• have hope to aspire to change themselves and the world for the better through their behaviours
• love through unselfish love for one another, reflecting God’s love for us.

Class Dojos

• Children are awarded Class Dojos in class for showing our school values
• A Headteacher’s certificate will be used to celebrate the collection of Dojo value points. These will be awarded by the Headteacher or Assistant Headteacher in the Friday celebration collective worship. The following certificates will be awarded for points collected:
  • 100 points = Headteacher’s Bronze Award
  • 200 points = Headteacher’s Silver Award
  • 300 points = Headteacher’s Gold Award

Wonderful Work and Shining Stars

• A certificate is given out weekly by the Headteacher to celebrate an individual's contribution
• A Wonderful Work certificate is awarded to celebrate an excellent piece of work a child has produced in any curriculum subject
• A Shining Star certificate is awarded to celebrate excellent behaviour or contribution in class

School Council Certificate

• The School Council will award a half termly certificate to a member of their class for exemplifying the school’s vision.  

Traffic Light System

• A class traffic light system is in place in classrooms for when children are not following the rules. All children start on green at the beginning of each day
• Moving to red will result in a 5-minute think time in class
• If the child continues to not follow the rules then it will result in a 15-minute think time, which parents will be informed of
• If a child receives three 15-minute think sheets over a two week period a meeting will be arranged between the parent and the class teacher

Trauma Informed Practise

As a Trauma Informed School, we are able to support children who suffer with trauma or mental health issues and whose behaviour can act as a barrier to their learning. A trauma informed culture means creating a school culture where everyone is aware of trauma and its effects, and where everyone is committed to supporting students who have experienced trauma. To provide care that is trauma-informed in school means to understand how traumatic events shape children or young people's neurological development as well as other aspects such as psychological health or social behaviour patterns. When students feel safe, they are more likely to behave positively in the classroom. This includes things like paying attention, following rules and cooperating with others.

Emotional Regulation - SCERTS®

SCERTS® is a comprehensive intervention model for children to help them develop social communication and emotional regulation skills.

SCERTS provides specific guidelines for helping pupils to become competent and confident social communicators and active learners. By following this model, we hope that it enables pupils to the most available they can be for their learning, and to prevent problem behaviours. SCERTS is designed to help families, educators and therapists collaborate in a carefully coordinated manner.

A unique aspect of SCERTS is that the most significant challenges are addressed while identifying and building upon strengths. This is accomplished though family professional partnerships, and by prioritising the abilities and supports that will lead to the most positive long-term outcomes. This ties in well with our Trauma Informed Schools Approach (TIS).

In practice, we look at how different situations and activities require different levels of energy. Children are guided to understand what different energy levels can look like in their own minds, bodies and behaviours. We then work with children to help them ‘power up or power down’ where necessary. A change in energy levels will often require different strategies and that is what we aim to teach our pupils.

Each class has ‘Energy Check’ posters and table aids. Our staff refer to energy levels when speaking with children or working through issues.

Restorative Justice

At St Augustine’s, we use a restorative approach to create a positive learning environment where children learn and practice the skills to regulate their own behaviour and learning. We focus on repairing harm rather than punishing the pupil. This allows all children involved in a behaviour incident to help resolve the conflict and address the root of the problem. It can help to strengthen relationships and improve learning, while reducing bullying and the need for sanctions.

Restorative approaches are based on the five Rs: 

Relationships – building positive relationships built on trust and mutual understanding

Respect – for everyone by listening to other opinions and learning to value them

Responsibility - taking responsibility for your own actions

Repair – ensuring that all members of our school community have the skills necessary to identify solutions that repair harm

Re-Integration - working through a structured, supportive process that resolves the issue and ensures that behaviours are not repeated, which allows children to remain in mainstream education.

Restorative approaches encourage children to think about how their behaviour has affected others, both pupils and staff. It helps children to develop respect, responsibility and honesty. Restorative Justice helps to make our school a happier place, where the focus is on learning not conflict. We want children to feel safe and respected and to know that, when things go wrong, we will do everything we can to help put it right.

Restorative Justice Meetings

We may invite pupils to take part in a Restorative Justice meeting if they are having a conflict at school. This is a meeting with everyone involved during which they will have the opportunity to:

· Discuss what has happened

· Think about who has been affected or upset

· Decide how it can be put right

· Find a way forward - in a way that is fair to everyone.

To make sure that those who have been making poor behaviour choices can be held accountable, they will be expected to take responsibility for their actions before the meeting starts. This allows the school to:

· help children who have been upset by the poor behaviour of others by expecting the offender to put right the upset they have caused

· help children to change their behaviour in a way that also holds them fully responsible

· help children to identify actions or promises that they need to agree to carry out so the conflict can be put right and doesn't happen again

The Language of Restorative Justice Meetings

When children find themselves in conflict or have been upset, we will ask them:

• What happened?
• What were you thinking when it happened?
• What do you think now?
• Who has been affected or upset by this and how?
• What would you think if this happened to you?
• What could you do differently next time?
• What other choice could you have made?
• What needs to happen to put this right?
• How could you make sure this doesn't happen again?

Growth Mindset

At St Augustine’s CE Primary School, we encourage all children to develop a Growth Mindset. This is the concept that intelligence can grow. It emphasises the importance of positive learning attitudes including resilience, perseverance and problem solving.

At St Augustine’s, we aim to foster a positive attitude and mindset about learning where children understand how their brain can grow in order to help them to achieve their potential, embrace challenges, persists in the face of setbacks and see mistakes and failures as a necessary step to growing and mastering useful skills. It emphasises the principle that struggle and failure are an essential part of learning. Children are encouraged to embrace challenge and look for ways to push themselves beyond their comfort zone in a supportive environment.

We want the children to understand that some of their best learning is done when they find things the hardest. Rather than simply praising success, we praise effort and persistence. We believe that it’s important to teach children to enjoy challenges, be curious about their mistakes, find pleasure in making an effort and persevere in their learning. For those children who find their work easy, we provide more challenging tasks. We encourage our children to recognise that effort and persistence help them to learn and improve.

Our children are taught NED:

Never give up – learn to say, “I can’t do it, YET.”

Encourage others – spark courage in other people

Do your best – always be learning and growing.

Research by Developmental Psychologist Dr Carol Dweck indicates that people have one of, or a combination of, two mindsets: Growth and Fixed. A child's belief about intelligence is an important factor in whether they become an effective learner. Our children learn about the two types of mindsets that children and adults can have, a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. 

Fixed Mindset 

• I like my work to be easy 
• I don’t like to attempt a challenge 
• I want people to praise me for how clever I am 
• I believe I cannot change how clever I am 
• I don’t like to try new things because I won’t be very good at it 
• I give up easily

Growth Mindset 

• I never give up 
• I like my work to be difficult – it means I am learning 
• I love challenges 
• I want people to praise me for the effort I put into my work 
• I believe I can get more intelligent by working hard 
• I feel clever when I’m learning something new 
• I learn from my mistakes 

There is evidence that having a Growth Mindset can improve children’s progress and attainment and we encourage the children to recognise that, by having a Growth Mindset, they can grow their brains and intelligence and be the best they can be. Children with a growth mindset are more likely to continue working hard despite setbacks. If children have a fixed mindset, they find it hard to cope with failure, so we teach children to see mistakes and failure as positive. This has a positive effect on the way in which children approach learning and support each other.

How you can help at home 

• Praise the amount of effort your child is putting into things rather than how clever they are 
• Talk to your children about their brain being like a muscle - the more they use it, the stronger it gets
• Encourage your children to not give up if they are finding something difficult 
• Challenge your children to try something new or challenging.