The information below was produced some while ago, but is retained here in case schools are still referencing it.
Welcome to the Behaviour and Attendance section of the Wokingham Schools Learning Community.
Pedagogy and Practice: Teaching and Learning in Secondary Schools
When learning and teaching improve, an improvement in behaviour and attendance is seen. With this principle in mind, the ‘PED Pack’ (‘Pedagogy and Practice: Teaching and Learning in Secondary Schools’) is being used extensively in Wokingham’s secondary schools. This pack contains 20 Units, each of which can be approached in a variety of ways.
Primary National Strategy
The materials provided for The Primary Strategy are divided into 2 distinct sections, SEAL materials, and ‘Behaviour and Attendance: developing skills’.
Seal Materials
This publication is a resource to help primary schools develop children’s social, emotional and behavioural skills. It includes assemblies and follow-up ideas for work in class. It will be used by schools who have identified the social and emotional aspects of learning as a key focus for their work with the children. These will be schools who know that the factors holding back learning in their setting include children’s difficulties in understanding and managing their feelings, working co-operatively in groups, motivating themselves and demonstrating resilience in the face of setbacks. These will not necessarily be schools where behaviour and attendance are poor. The materials will help develop children as effective learners and are therefore relevant to schools without significant behaviour problems as well as to those with behaviour or attendance as key issues.
The publication has been developed as a result of work over the last two years in over 500 schools taking part in the Primary National Strategy’s behaviour and attendance pilot. This resource aims to develop the underpinning qualities and skills that help promote positive behaviour and effective learning. It focuses on five social and emotional aspects of learning: self-awareness, managing feelings, motivation, empathy and social skills.
The materials help children develop skills such as understanding another’s point of view, working in a group, sticking at things when they get difficult, resolving conflict and managing worries. They build on effective work already in place in the many primary schools who pay systematic attention to the social and emotional aspects of learning through whole-school ethos, initiatives such as circle time or buddy schemes, and the taught PSHE and Citizenship curriculum.
The materials are organised into seven themes: New Beginnings, Getting on and falling out, Say no to bullying, Going for goals!, Good to be me, Relationships and Changes. Each theme is designed for a whole-school approach and includes a whole school assembly and suggested follow-up activities in all areas of the curriculum. The colour-coded resources are organized at four levels: Foundation Stage, Years 1 and 2, Years 3 and 4 and Years 5 and 6. Pupil reference material and photocopiable teacher reference material accompany each theme.
There is a whole-school pack for the staffroom, a year-group pack with the same materials organised into a set of booklets for each year group from early Foundation Stage through to Y6, and a resource file of photographs and posters.
Behaviour and Attendance: Developing Skills
This is divided into six sections:
A) The Initial Review
Six areas of focus:
Leadership and management
Whole-school ethos and framework
School organizational factors and the management and deployment of resources
Continuing to improve the quality of teaching and learning through classroom-level factors
Pupil support systems
Staff development and support
B) The In-Depth Audit
Only work on the areas that have been identified as needing further investigation. The process involves three steps:
1 - Preparing for the audit.
Communication
Collection of key data and information
2 - Seeking the views of the key parties
Electronic audit: The electronic audit offers a degree of flexibility that is not possible when conducting a paper-based audit. Using the electronic audit, you can:
print blank copies of any of the audit booklets;
customize any of the forms;
use ready-made ‘mix and match’ survey packages that take items from across the six in-depth audits to include a single issue focus. There are three of these:
1. emotional health and wellbeing (SEAL)
2. bullying
3. attendance;
analyse information in a number of ways; and
produce data in a range of formats.
3 - Deciding on the action required.
There is also a section ‘School self-evaluation’ for a 60 minute training module on the initial review and the in-depth audit.
C) Developing and reviewing your whole-school behaviour and attendance policy
This is a two hour module, of which 45 minutes discusses core principles, beliefs and values.
D) Focusing on solutions
This is a two hour module.
The solution focused model is a positive problem-solving tool. The model encourages teachers and others involved in developing effective behaviour management to adopt a positive stance in which energy is directed towards finding satisfactory ways forward rather then focusing on what is going wrong in a situation.
Sessions are:
Building on success
Exception finding
Preferred futures
Rating scales
E) School self-evaluation
This is a training module for the initial review and the in-depth audit.
F) Positive behaviour and the learning environment
This is a training module of one hour, looking at ways the environment can promote behaviour for learning.
