Positive discipline in Early Years/KS1

[rubytwokids]

In dd's school they use the 'sun and cloud' thing: picture of a cloud, a rainbow and a sunshine on the wall. So far as I can work out, all the children have their names stuck onto the rainbow. If they do something worthy of praise, they get to move their name onto the sunshine, if they do something undesirable, they get to move their name onto the cloud. If they get onto the cloud several times in one day, they miss a play time. Seems to be popular in schools at the moment.

I acknowldege that I don't fully understand the system (as evidenced by my poor explanation of it, above!) but I'm not overly keen on it. Seems to me that the children missing their playtimes are the ones most in need of a good run about out in the fresh air, so no one really gains there. Plus it seems to be the same old names on the cloud, time and time again, which makes me think it's maybe not working as the incentive it was planned to be!

Does anyone know of any systems that strike them as better? I'm not about to go into school and suggest a change of approach - I'm just genuinely interested! I'm particularly interested in systems which use a 'positive discipline' approach and which seem to work.

Thanks.

I used to use stickers for my under 5's - they used to stick them on photos (so that they didn't end up stuck on their socks )

But I took the photos down (to put new ones up & I never got round to it) & I think the children's behaviour has improved - I need to work a little harder on positive reinforcement but the results are worth it

I did a High Scope course & I have to remember to say what I am pleased with rather than good boy, or that's nice; I say 'wow you put the books away quickly' or 'what lovely sharing, Thank you'

It has such nice results

See Littlefish - we are the same person! I'm in Norfolk How do you find it? (working from the EY model?) It's going pretty well for us.

KatyMac sounds very similar to what we say. SO - if a child puts their coat on and zips it up on their on I would say something like "Oh, you were really independent then." I find it widens their vocabulary too. Last week, when I said that a child was really independent when they put zipped their coat up he said, "Mrs Sarararah, you're independent too aren't you?!" [I was putting my coat on to go outside too!] Bless!

I'm Norfolk too (near to Acle)

Ooh interesting KatyMac - not sure I should say where I am as the school would be instantly identifiable! You may have guessed already? Prob best not to say though

I think so - do you mind if I CAT you.....if we are close enough - it's nice to chat to people who do behaviour management the same similar way or to bounce ideas off each other?

Ds's old school used to get stickers to put around their photos - ds always took 3 times as long to fill his, not because he was naughty but simply because he wasn't in your face about his being good. Lots of the girls were really much better about being good if the teacher was watching or if another child had just got a sticker. The boys largely did not give a crap.

He would have been upset about being on the cloud the OP mentions, but wouldn't have been bothered about getting himself off the rainbow.

KatyMac that would be great but have to set myself up for it first as haven't done it before! Am at work today til late have maths parents curriculum eve.

Ruby - yes it#s great isn't it. We are in the fortunate position to have a FAB head. Although we haven't been Ofsteded yet so not sure what they will make of it! Would be interested to hear what they have said at Littlefish's school.

We haven't been ofsteded yet either. Actually, that's not quite right. We were ofsteded pre moving to a creative curriculum. We're expecting Ofsted again in either July or October. Funnily enough, I woke up thinking about this thread this morning.

My dd will go to a lovely little village school where behaviour is never an issue. My concern about the school is that they just seem to be resting on their laurels a bit. The teaching seems a bit lack lustre because the teachers can get away with it. In spite of the lack lustre teaching, all the children make good progress, and standards are good (but not outstanding).

In my school, you can never get away with it. You have to start with the children's interests and level. You have to work in a play based, exploratory way. You have to link different areas of the curriculum together. You have to give children to chance to talk, discuss and make mistakes. Behaviour is challenging enough when you are on top of all of this. I can't begin to think what it would be like if I ever tried to teach a "sit-down-and-get-on-with-it lesson".

I'm from an EY background, so it all makes sense to me. I love it. Working in Y2, but with the freedom to teach in a creative, child centred way. The only fly in the ointment is SATS which we still have to do. It does mean that this term, there are a few things we will teach individual children if we know we haven't covered them yet.

Ruby - the thing is that most parents really wouldn't want their children to come to Sarararah's and my school (apologies if that's not the case Sarararah - please correct me). Yes, our ideals and our ethos are fantastic, but the schools are probably both in areas of extremely high deprivation, with low results, low parental support and challenging behaviour.

If only more parents did want to send their children to our schools. At the moment, the top 30% of children in our area are sent to different schools. It's one of the things that makes it incredibly hard for us to improve our results.

This is such a fab thread, was talking to dh about it last night

I find the 'well done you're so independent' approach with my ds works well though he is now very articulate as a result. The 'good boy' (as you would train a dog -think that's from alphie Kohen!) I find a bit patronising! His teachers and I have to take a step back and listen to what he says as his amazing vocabulary and the fact he's been asked to make decisions from a very young age means he can come across as a precocious little boy. Eg he said the other day 'I've listened to you, I heard you but I don?t agree with you' -rude that he has the balls to disagree in the normal state school system as that's not really what you say to adults/teachers but we've allowed him his own opinion and to make choices and for self esteem, self confidence development he really has no problem! He's happy to join in games he wants to, tell children he doesn't want to do something which I am hoping will equip him for the teenage years we all dread. It takes confidence to have a 4 year old tell you they think you?re wrong but if you continue the conversation and ask why he thinks that he will come up with very well thought out ideas. We spend a lot of time talking in our house but I do know this isn't possible in some schools or households.

With my lovely nutty class we spent a lot of time talking -why do we need to behave? Why do we have to get on with people? I remember sitting one day and saying to them that they legally had to be in school and I trained for 4 years to do this job as I love teaching so why can't we just get on with it??? We talked about swearing as they'd asked -why was swearing so bad as it was only words!

I do miss them

Our school system is based around controlling large groups of children?s behaviour, the curriculum is very tight and perpetual so following the children?s interest can prove difficult (I will remember the day one of my classes downed tools and we all went over to the window and spent about 15 mins looking at the most amazing storm -we were high on a ridge so the view was wonderful. Would have been fab to write poetry, take photos, draw/paint, record the sounds made etc etc but we were in Literacy which was immovable? We also took moved our classroom outside as it was 30 degrees in the class and the children were getting heat rashes (bloody crap inappropriate building, you wouldn?t let adults work in it yet it was fine for children??) and spend 2 days working in the open air under the trees. You have to have understanding heads to do things like that!) we don?t trust teacher?s to actually get on with what they are trained to do and accountability, although very necessary, has gone to far.

I will get off my soapbox now!

Muppetgirl re. your last paragraph. - We are definitely encouraged to deviate from/ abandon planning and follow children's interests if something else comes up.

Having spent hours planning a literacy lesson once, we had a visiting priest in assembly who happened to be a clown! Yes, a real clown! The children were so fascinated by him and what he said and did that I threw my carefully planned day out of the window and we went out and practiced circus skills, planned circus posters, thought about the skills and qualities a clown would need, planned a budget for the circus etc. etc. etc. Fab day!

Littlefish -that's fab!

I think things are moving in the right direction -from friends who are still teaching, but I did work with teachers who taught the same year every year and had done for 20 years or more.

Oh yes, I worked with one of those too. She was my job share partner at a previous school. It was a nightmare. The old "It's Spring term, week 2 so we must be doing Florence Nightingale" - Crap. She even kept all her display labels in envelopes so she could use them year after year. I would be so utterly bored - no wonder their teaching gets boring.

I know a teacher who did the great fire of london every year!! She had the same displays even the parents commented 'Oh so and so is now in year 2, Great Fire of London Time!!!'

Quote 'So - for example - child a hurts themselves - child b goes over, checks they're ok and puts their arm round them. We might say, "Oh child b, look at child a's face, don't they look happier since you did that?"

All this is because we believe the only long lasting motivation for good behaviour / working hard is intrinsic motivation. It's no good if you're doing it to please a teacher or to avoid getting in to trouble with a teacher - not as long lasting or effective

But you have just contradicted yourself there.If you praise the child for good behaviour then that is not encouraging intrinsic motivation

Did you see there was a really inspiring Dispatches programme on Channel 4 earlier this month looking at the provision of nurture rooms and how successful they can be? It is probably not online any more but if I do find it I will link to it.

Good point, Littlefish.

By the way, I apologise for the incohrent nature of my last posting. Part of it was not getting the strike out thing to work (ever!) and part of it was inadvertently deleting part of a sentence! Sorry. What dd actually questioned was why she never manages to notch up the much-coveted 35 minutes of Golden Time.

Muppetgirl, I am enjoying all the replies too!

Katiestar, I didn't spot the contradiction, at least not in the extract you chose. It seemed to me that the poster was saying they draw the child's attention to the effect their behaviour has on others, not that they praise the child for finally behaving better. Apologies, though, if I have misunderstood your post.

MrsCurly, I will do a search for that - thanks!

Hi MrsCurly - yes, I saw the dispatches programme and put it onto DVD as well in case any of my colleagues missed it. It was great to see other nurture groups in action.

Ruby - if you want to borrow it, I'd be happy to lend it to you.

Well, back to the classroom tomorrow for my 2 days! First, we're looking at inventors, watching a DVD of dragons den and considering what character traits you would need to be an inventor. Then we are inventing/designing funiture for one of our current book characters - then we have to price it up according to how many resources we have used (all 2p and 5p) to link with our numeracy. Then, we're making the invitations for our science workshop in 2 weeks time where we invite parents and carers to share what we've been doing over the last 5 weeks. Should be fun!

Littlefish, how kind are you?! Thank you for the offer, but I found it, still online (but only for the next 7 days) here. It is really interesting. I've gone from not knowing about nuture rooms to thinking they are the bee's knees, in the space of one eveming.

Good luck, Cat64!

Yes Ruby, that is the way I meant what I said. I think the difference is in the language you choose. If I was praising the child I would say "Well done. Good girl/boy" But what we do is to point out the effect each behaviour has (whether positive or negative) so that they begin to see and understand these things for themselves. Does that make sense? Maybe not? It is v late and I've only just got in so...?!

Also Littlefish, we're not actually in a deprived area although we don't have the easiest of kids, particularly in one of our classes. However I think some of our parents are really glad to send their children to a school like ours but generally we're having to do an awful lot of educating the parents as to how/why we do things the way we do. They tend to compare what happens at their friend's schools and panic because what we do is different. In my current class I probably could get away with a "sit-down-and get-on-with-it" type lesson, but I never would want to. Certainly couldn't have got away with it with my class last year though!

We're encouraged to go with the children's interests too muppetgirl. We're just asked to write what we planned to do in one colour and what we actually did in another colour on our planning. It works really well. Agree you need a very good head though to be brave. Ours is fab - I think all our staff will be at the school long term as we're so interested to see the affect on the kids long term. Our current Y1 will be the real test - can't wait to see them in Y6!

I mean effect don't I?!

Sararararh _ I am with you on educating the parents...

Ours were a very hard bunch as they had thier own needs and issues with education. They were very aggressive at times but they saw my class was calm and the children were working so they came round a little. I think parents are so conditioned into rewards/sticker charts ect that they can't see any other way of doing things. As I've said the focus at the moment is really on 'controlling' behaviour and not teaching children to think which will influence their behaviour for the future. I have a friend who is an ardent sticker chart user but she herself admits that when the sticker chart is full, the behaviour she is encouraging stops and when she asks her child why she has stopped the children replied 'there isn't any room for more stickers' proving that when there is no incentive, the behaviour reverts back.

My son is no angel but he realises that there are some things you just have to do. I tidy his room when I get home from the school run and he tidy's it before bed. He knows it's boring but it needs to be done becasue standing on a piece of lego in the night is very painful!!!! He doesn't get stickers, he has just learned that being tidy although boring is necessary. He does small jobs around the house as he is learning that we are all a team and need to help each other. Like I said, he's no angel and we have our own issues at the moment like all families -currently him wanting to wipe his own bum but instead smearing it all over the toilet, floor and himself. Ho hum!
But I do feel that to expect children to do small jobs for themselves and others for no reward is a very important lessson to learn.