Behaviour

LOVE God    LOVE Neighbour    LOVE Self   (Matthew 22:36)

As a Church of England school, our school vision takes inspiration from and is deeply rooted in the Greatest Commandment:

“Love God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and love your neighbour as yourself”.

At St Chad's, we are committed to developing happy, confident, loving and caring children who look after and value themselves, each other and their world. We want every child to feel valued and special and flourish with their unique God-given talents in all that they choose to do. This is why our school’s core values of love, friendship, compassion and respect sit at the heart of our school community and underpin every aspect of school life. 

Love: “Do everything with love”. (Corinthians 16:14)

Friendship: “Encourage one another and build each other up”. (Thessalonians 5:11)

Compassion: “Be kind to one another”. (Ephesians 4:32)

Respect: “Treat others as you want to be treated”. (Luke 6:31)

We believe that in all aspects of school life, everybody has the right to feel safe, valued and respected and we do not leave this to chance. Positive behaviour is not automatically learned but needs to be taught, modelled and supported by staff and parents. Therefore, our approach to managing behaviour is based upon four key principles:

  • Relationships Matter
  • Remarkable Routines
  • Visible Consistency, Visible Consistency
  • Over and Above Recognition  

Strong relationships between staff, children and parent/carers are of vital importance and the bedrock to all that we say and do at St Chad’s. We believe that the most important aspect in children feeling valued, safe and secure is the sense of connection and trust with a member (or members) of staff. We are committed to nurturing and developing the positive behaviours that we expect within our school and community, promoting a culture of kindness, praise and encouragement in which all children can achieve and ensuring quality and fair treatment for all. 

School Rules

School rules are kept to an essential minimum. We seek to be positive role models to our children, guiding and teaching them through our school’s ‘LOVE Promise’. We:

Look after each other and their school

Only ever do their best

Value everyone and remember their manners

Enjoy learning together!

Three school rules are embedded alongside our school’s LOVE Promise:

  • Be ready                  
  • Show love               
  • Be safe

An essential element of our behaviour system is the relentless modelling and highlighting of our daily remarkable routines:

  • Wonderful walking means no talking
  • Lovely lines
  • Mealtime manners  

Rewards

We believe that children will achieve more, be better motivated and behave better, when staff commend and reward their successes rather than focus on their failure which is why we ensure that praise and reward have greater emphasis. To support us in our relentless highlighting of the positive behaviours that we want to embed, we have the following systems in place:

Class Dojo

Class Dojo is an online resource that allows children to be individually rewarded for demonstrating:

  • General positive behaviours and habits e.g. good sitting, correct uniform
  • Positive behaviour linked to the school’s LOVE Promise e.g. being a good friend, tidying up
  • Positive learning behaviours e.g. asking a good question, using a new word

Parents/Carers are asked to sign up to Class Dojo so that they can celebrate their children’s achievements at home too and help to reinforce positive behaviour

Recognition Board

Every class has a dedicated recognition board in their classroom. On a daily or weekly basis (depending on the age of the class/context), the class teacher will set a focus for the good behaviour he/she wants from the children in the class e.g. one voice if children keep talking over each other. When staff see children demonstrating the behaviour well, this is enthusiastically acknowledged this on the board. The recognition board is not intended to shower praise on the individual and instead is a collaborative strategy and is there to recognise effort, not achievement. The aim is to get everyone's name on the board by the end of the session/day/week (depending on the age of the class/context). When everyone gets on the board, the reward is the shared sense of accomplishment and team work.

LOVE Book

We have a ‘LOVE Book’ dedicated for the praise and recognition of children following the school’s LOVE Promise. LOVE Book Collective Worships are held with the Headteacher every Friday. Teachers are able to nominate two children from their class. Class teachers complete a certificate with a brief summary of their reason for nomination which is presented during the ceremony. The children’s names are then published on the school’s main Class Dojo page.

Kings and Queens

At the end of every half-term, there is a Kings and Queen ceremony dedicated for the praise and recognition of two children from each class who have made particularly noteworthy progress for attainment, achievement or attitude. Parents are personally invited to attend and witness the presentation of certificates and ‘carnation’ of the children. Photographs of the children are displayed in the school hall for the full duration of the half-term.

SLT Recognition

Where a child has gone ‘over and above’ with their learning or by their actions, they can be sent to see a member of the senior leadership team. The child will receive a special sticker and the headteacher will personally inform parents on the gate at home time.

 Lunchtime LOVE Table

In order to encourage and reward tidy eating and good table manners over lunchtime, we have a weekly LOVE table in our dinner hall (a decorated table in the main school hall). Lunchtime staff will nominate three children from each class for showing ‘marvellous mealtime manners’ to sit at the LOVE table once a week with the Headteacher. Children will be presented with a certificate and sticker. Class teachers and members of the pastoral team support mealtime manners by carrying out a lunchtime duty once a week and eating their lunch with the children in the hall.

Sanctions and Behaviour Support

Instances of unacceptable behaviour are taken seriously and dealt with immediately. We have an agreed system in place to ensure a consistent and fair response when incidents of inappropriate behaviour do take place, as outlined in our Relational Behaviour Policy and Anti-Bullying Policy. Copies of our policies can be found here.

We understand that behaviour can sometimes be the result of educational, mental health, other needs or vulnerabilities, and will address these needs via an individualised graduated response, as outlined in our SEND and Inclusion procedures . To support behavioural issues related to social, emotional or mental health (SEMH), we aim to create a safe and calm environment following the principles of Communication Friendly Spaces. Positive mental health and wellbeing are promoted through our curriculum, leadership practice, policies, values and attitudes, alongside the social and physical environment. 

Parents as Partners

We recognise the vital role that parents and carers play in their child's personal development and education which is why we are fully committed to forging strong home-school partnerships. Members of our school's pastoral team play a key link between home and school. Mrs Kay, our school's Welfare Officer and Mrs Sohanpal, our school's Family Support Worker, provide both pastoral and family support to our whole school and may work closely alongside families where behaviour is stopping a child from learning, both inside and outside of school. 

Inclusion Charter

In 2022, St Chad’s became a member of Derby City Council’s Inclusion Charter. Inspired by training and reading material accessed through the charter, including Dave Whitaker’s The Kindness Principle, Mark Finnis’s Restorative Practice and Paul Dix’s When the Adult Changes, we are now moving towards introducing a relational behaviour policy as part of our ongoing commitment to inclusion. In September 2022, we launched our revised behaviour policy, a copy can be found here.

Senior leaders continue to access further training as part of the school improvement work and currently we are working on some revised updates to our policy and practices with the support of our school’s Educational Psychologist, Stella Lawlor, and the children’s wellbeing charity, Bridge the Gap. 

Our objectives for the end of 2023-2024 are to become a trauma informed school and to train all staff (teaching and non-teaching) in the biology of stress. We aim to:

  • Improve staff’s knowledge on the neuroscience of behaviour
  • Develop staff’s skills and capabilities in emotional literacy
  • Make improvements to our curriculum to further support the explicit teaching and learning of emotional literacy

In 2024-2025, we aim to begin supporting our parents on our relational approach to school improvement.