Positive Behaviour
We are strongly committed to rewarding positive behaviour, especially that which clearly shows a commitment to our School Values. We hope that you will support us in promoting them. We have just a few school rules, which we expect children to keep. These have been devised by the older children and the school council. Each class also discusses and creates their own class rules, which are displayed in their room.
We do discuss issues concerning behaviour during Assembly times and during class work, and all staff have high expectations of the children. The older children are taught that they must "lead the way" and set a good example. We also care for each other and this is often commented upon by visitors to the school who see day-to-day examples of children supporting each other in lots of ways.
Please be assured that all of the children are well behaved for nearly all of the time they are in school. It is our policy to tell you when they are not. Persistent poor behaviour is managed appropriately in consultation with parents /carers.
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| Positive behaviour policy June 2024.pdf | Download |
Just Right Approach
At St Margaret’s we believe in supporting children to become more independent and to be able to self-regulate their emotions. We are a Just Right school and we begin the year by refreshing the children on the basis of the Just Right Approach to sensory regulation.
Just Right is a system for supporting sensory & emotional regulation in children with autism “The ‘Just Right’ approach is built round a scaling system, with four key colour zones – blue, green, orange, red - each of which relates to a different sensory or emotional state. We teach all the children about these colour zones and what feelings they relate to. Green (regulated, focused - where we need to be for optimum learning), orange (you may feel excitable or frustrated - referred to as feeling fizzy), red (dysregulated) and blue (low feelings such as being tired or anxious). Its aim is to help children understand and communicate how they are feeling and what makes them feel ‘just right’, when they’re calm and alert and able to respond to whatever is happening in their environment. Children are encouraged to think about strategies which help them to stay, or get back to the green zone. By focussing on the green zone in this way, we avoid an over concentration on negative feelings and the accompanying behaviours.
Information is gathered from parents, the child, teachers and specialists who work with them to find out what ‘just right’ feels like to them and what can be done to help keep them feeling like that as much as possible. This might be making sure they have the same seat every day or that they get a short burst of exercise to either calm them (orange) or wake them up if they’re slumping into the blue zone.
The brilliant thing about ’Just Right’ is that it is absolutely tailored to the individual child. Each child will have an entirely different set of circumstances that keep them feeling ‘just right’ and an entirely different set of triggers. Parents and carers can use that same bank of tools and strategies too, which gives a consistent approach across children’s lives.
Staff model the use of Just Right language, taking particular care to verbalise if they find themselves in the orange or red zones thus normalising those ‘big’ feelings that we all experience. When children exhibit challenging behaviour in the classroom, the Just Right language is used as a way of helping the child to express how they are feeling and to give a focus for the child to regulate themselves. Some children who find it particularly hard to remain regulated in a school environment will have an individual Just Right learning profile that is shared with all the adults in the school, to ensure a consistent approach to supporting in times of dysregulation.
