Behaviour and Emotional Regulation
Emotional Regulation and Behaviour
At Northwood Community Primary School, we want to ensure all of our pupils are safe at school. Part of keeping children safe at school is about teaching our children to manage their feelings and behaviours appropriately and about how we manage children’s feelings and behaviours when something goes wrong.
What do we believe about behaviour at Northwood Community Primary School?
- We believe in having high behavioural expectations for all children and families at school and expect children and families to follow our values of respect, kindness, honesty, teamwork and happiness.
- We believe that behaviour is communication. That children and adults tell us about their needs through their behaviour.
- We believe that the relationships children have with adults are key to helping them learn how to regulate their emotions and their behaviour.
- We believe that the dignity of each child is important and as such we are a non-shouting school and follow a supportive, emotion coaching, approach to every child and family.
What is an Emotional Regulation policy?
- Emotional regulation is about how children and adults manage their feelings and behaviours. When a person is emotionally regulated they feel happy, are able to work well, relate to others well and can solve problems and deal with setbacks and the ups and downs of life, at a level appropriate for their age.
- Our policy is called an Emotional Regulation Policy, rather than behaviour policy, because we believe that emotional regulation is the key to ensuring children can manage their feelings and behaviours. We devote a lot of time and resources to supporting our children and families with their emotional wellbeing and regulation.
How do we support children’s emotional regulation?
Emotion coaching and positive relationships | Emotion Coaching communicates to children that emotions they feel are normal and natural and that they can learn to respond more positively to their emotions, with help from trusted adults. All staff seek to develop positive relationships with children and build trust. We want children and families to feel connected and that they belong in our school.
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Restorative approaches
| Restorative approaches are when an adult supports a child to understand their own feelings, the impact of their behaviour and what they can do differently next time to avoid the same problem. This helps children to feel they can change their behaviours and to avoid feelings of shame. We seek to repair relationships and ensure that all children involved in the incident feel empowered to understand the event and play a part in how to resolve it.
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My Happy Mind and Pastoral support | Our Learning Mentors offer emotional support programmes to our children, we have two ELSAs (emotional literacy support assistants) on staff and we use Play Therapy and Dog Therapy to support the needs of our children. My Happy Mind is a taught programme for every child in school that focusses on understand our brains, thoughts and feelings and how to manage our own wellbeing. It has a parent app also that is very useful at home.
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Rewards and consequences
| We reward positive behaviour choices through any of the following: verbal praise, noticing when children are doing things right, giving points on class charts, speaking to parents/carers and certificates to rewards behaviours and achievements. Sometimes when all other support has been explored a fixed term suspension might be issued by the Headteacher.
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Working closely with parents and carers at home | We value a high level of parental engagement to support the needs of our children. Children respond best to strategies if they have a consistent message about emotions and behaviour communicated to them outside school and inside school. |
We expect all Parents/Carers to:
- Understand and accept the strategies outlined in our policy
- Understand that each child is unique, and problems cannot be solved by a one size fits all approach.
- Encourage their children to be respectful and resilient at home, at school and in the community
- Celebrate the effort and achievements of their child
- Support their child to develop their own sense of self-worth and confidence
- Understand and promote the idea of the importance of emotional regulation, of repairing harm and taking responsibility for your actions
- Work with school leaders and teachers to resolve any difficulties that their child may experience.
- Give us regular feedback so we can ensure we are all working together well.
Adults in School will:
- Model positive behaviour and emotional regulation at all times.
- Respond with compassion and listen to all children.
- Never shout at the children in our care.
- Actively teach the children to manage their feelings and behaviours.
- Treat each child with dignity.
- Keep parents and carers well informed about any concerns.
- Refer children for support at the earliest appropriate time.
The Reflection Room
The reflection room happens every lunchtime and is staffed by a member of Core SLT. Children are referred into the Reflection Room when a significant issue has happened in school, or there have been repeated incidents of the same behaviours. In the Refection Room children are supported to reflect on their behaviour, what they were thinking before, during and after, what was happening around them, what harm was caused, how we can repair that harm and what needs to happen next. Often we make a plan for how children can react to certain situations. Children do not miss their lunch and are given an outdoor break once reflection is completed.
Behaviour and Additional Needs
Research tells us that children displaying significant behavioural difficulties can sometimes have an unmet SEND need, or known SEND need that requires an adjustment to the support that children require.
At Northwood we offer a weekly SEND surgery for parents and carers to get advice and support from our SENCO. Please contact the school office on 0151-477-8630 to book an appointment for this service
External Help and Referrals
From time to time, we may need to seek more formal support for children’s behaviours. We may refer to the Mental Health Support Team or CAMHS, or we may refer to the Local Authority behaviour outreach service for additional guidance and support. We can sometimes involve an Educational Psychologist in developing support for a child.
Further Support
- Please follow our Communication Flow Chart if you have questions or concerns about your child’s behaviour.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KJa32r07xk&t=2s