Find out more
How to get school pupils to create their own internal discipline was one of the issues on the agenda at a behaviour management session held this month.
Feedback and recognition, promoting pro-social behaviours and the futility of endless detentions without an educational consequence were also hot topics.
The session was one of two one-hour events arranged for teachers in the Wellington College Teaching Alliance (WCTA) and held at Foundry College in Wokingham, which provides education and support to pupils who have been permanently excluded or are at risk of permanent exclusion.
Led by Foundry staff Nicky Rees and Louise Brookes, the sessions also highlighted the importance of ‘connection before correction’ and understanding that all behaviour is a form of communication.
Nicky said: “Consequences need to be appropriate and to make sense; one test we use is to see if the word ‘obviously’ could fit into the sentence.
“If you say to a student: ‘You did not complete your work in Maths so obviously you can’t do PE”, that doesn’t make sense. The two are not linked and the student is then missing part of the provision they should be getting.
“You need to find a more appropriate consequence, and one that they learn from. For example: ‘You did not complete your work in Maths so you will need to do it at breaktime as we are moving on tomorrow and I would not like you to be left behind.”
Thirty teachers from eight schools attended the sessions.
One participant said: “We will definitely take this back to our school to look at how we manage behaviour.
“Perhaps we don’t focus enough on positive behaviour, we focus too much on the negative, and we get stuck in a cycle.”
Another said: “My takeaway is that when students act up, it’s about understanding why they behave in that way, and I’m going to try not to react straightaway but to calm down and think about what else is going on that is making them behave like that. It was very valuable.”
The behaviour management event was a TeachMeet, which are arranged by the WCTA throughout the year.
They are part of the WCTA’s inter-school support programme, which helps schools work collaboratively for mutual benefit and to provide equal opportunities for all pupils.
Lindsay Gowland, WCTA Co-ordinator, said: “A huge thank you to Nicky and Louise for delivering these sessions and drawing on their expert experience in managing tricky behaviour.
“The issue of behaviour management gets raised often by teachers in the WCTA so we were pleased to be able to facilitate this TeachMeet and delighted it proved so popular.”
