How does your child's primary deal with bullying/exclusion/friendship issues etc in the playground please?

[Aloha]

Hi, going into ds's school tomorrow to look at how I can help improve things for him in the playground. He has aspergers and has been left out, manipulated and sometimes pushed around and it is making him suddenly reluctant to go to school. I have had lots of brilliant ideas on the SN board, but I was hoping to get loads of ideas on how different schools tackle these problems -eg mentoring/buddy systems with older children, friendship benches, outdoor structured play, indoor play, changes to how the playground is supervised etc.

I want to take in a stack of ideas and hope to make some changes now the new head teacher has started.

Thanks!

Go on, quick, before you go and pick them up!

Aloha, have to rush to pick up dd2, but I've had a similar thread (though no SN issues) on behaviour development topic re. 7-8yo boys. I've been thinking quite hard around these issues, so will try to post later.

Nothing at our school () but at the school my friends' children go to, they have a Friendship bench which works very very well i.e. no child is on there for more than a couple of minutes. I think it needs a "whole school" philosophy to work well though IYKWIM - if the teachers/supervisors are a bit half-hearted about it, the children will be too.

parent volunteers to help organise some easy games / activities a few days a week for those who want to join in

we have a Buddy Bus Stop
half the playground is for juniors, half for infants, don't know if this is feasible for you
good luck

I don't know if this will be of any help to you ...

Dd's infant school has a friendship stop, and every week two Year 1 or 2 children are chosen (they have to apply in writing) to be Playground Friends and make sure that no-one is left alone. They wear bright yellow caps and big badges so everyone knows who they are, and children can either approach them directly or wait at the friendship stop for them to come over.

The school has a fabulous Children's Mentor who is a counsellor, and who has been trained in mediation with children - if she becomes aware that a child is being left out, bullied, manipulared or pushed around, she has a number of techniques that she can put into play. Sometimes it's as simple as finding someone for the child to play with, or giving them some kind of responsibility (calling in different classes for lunch, for instance), sometimes she sets up friendship circles or team games for the children involved. She also has a team of children who meet regularly to discuss what's going on and how things can be improved, and she runs groups for children who have problems in the playground, usually because they aren't very confident, which help to teach the child the kind of social skills which are useful in playground situations.

Each class has its own play leader at lunchtimes, who organises activities for their class of children. They organise team games for children who don't have anyone to play with, and are expected to keep an eye out to make sure none of their children are being picked on. This hasn't always worked because in a playground of 270 children, one member of staff can't always keep an eye on 30 individuals, but the children can always find a play leader or the Mentor if they need to.

Hi Aloha, im sorry to hear about you son having problems at shool.
I think you have some very good points to offer already.

Ds1 has been bullied at school for some time now, it started with one boy who stopped almost everyone talking to or playing with ds1.

On Friday DS1 got to talk to his class and explain about the tourettes and ask if anyone had any questions about it (he is 10), since doing this some of the children have been a bit nicer.

Is the Aspergers something that he feels is a reason for the problem, and would talking about it to his class help them understand and b nicer??

Sorry if this is no help at all, its all i had to offer.
Good luck. xx

This is all brilliant and I'm hugely grateful everyone. Ds is only five, so he has absolutely no idea really why things are going a bit pear-shaped for him at breaktimes (I haven't explained about aspergers really yet, just tell him that everyone is different and have different things they are good at etc), but I hope I can help the school set stuff up to help him. Am realising that it is really lax atm. Hoping the new head will see this as an area in which she can make quick, Ofsted-friendly changes at no extra cost!

Sorry to hear about your DS's problems. My DS1 is currently in Reception. He is quite a sensitive child and I think he could easily be picked on. Luckily he has his sister at the same school, but I have also found that enrolling him in a few after-school clubs have helped because he gets to know children from other years and they seem to protect the little ones they know. I think it has been a big help for him to be taken under the wings by a couple of older boys.

WWB's school sounds amazing. There are loads of strategies like those that can be used, and in one book I read, it suggested that the ordinary playground supervisors should be trained to take a proactive part in making sure breaks went well, by doing the things that WWB's Children's Mentor does. This could all be seen as upgrading the jobs of the playground supervisors, and I've read of that being linked to upgrading dinner ladies as per Jamie Oliver - a general upgrade of those roles for the benefit of the school as a whole.

We have the Playground Buddies (yellow hats clearly the norm, ours are hideous, they look like small Rubettes) and a friendship bench which does seem to work well. Each child in infants has a Year 5/6 Mentor/Minder although inevitably this varies in effectiveness.
The school doesn't have an "anti-bullying" policy per se but does have a set of Friendship and Respect Golden Rules.
A good ratio of playground supervisors to children is helpful too. Ds was grumbling about his being too caring the other day.
I am really sorry to hear this aloha and hope the new head is keen to do something about it.

Aloha, everyone has posted much more useful ideas while I was out!

Just to say that someone posted on my thread about my ds's school problems with a link to an anti-bullying website that encourages children to work on strategies for boosting their immunity to bullies, as it were. I thought the approach was quite helpful and we've tried a couple of the strategies with ds, so far with a modest amount of success.

Realise this may not be appropriate to your ds's situation, but just thought I'd mention it.

Good luck!

of topic, frogs I have seen your thread and made some comments, hope they are useful.

Thanks tm, will respond with an update when I finish this really really tedious edit I'm trying to do!

How did it go Aloha? I am interested to hear how you got on!