Behaviour Issues

[Cat22]

Dear All,

 

Can anyone help me with some ideas to develop positive respectful play. I have just returned to my reception class, after missing the first half term as I was unable to work due to having a fractured wrist. My class were taken by three seperate teachers throughout the 7 weeks so they have had no consisitency, which has led to no boundaries or rules been set.

 

The majority of my class are great but I have about 6 or 7 children who are very bositerious, curious and are finding respecting toys and property hard. They damage toys in their play, or school property. I have spent the last week finding out what interests them, and clicked on cars, so spent the last two days setting up learning focusing on cars and I thought i'd cracked it, but no, they built a garage and then went onto damage the school in doing so, even though they were really keen on their activities about cars. I was working with them / supervising them, and in the time it took me to speak to another child about planning a route around the playground, the boys had damage the school with innapproriate play. The boys knew they shouldn't have done what they did but my gut reaction was that it was children exploring and finding out and didn't think of the consequences. Unfortunately, my head doesn't see it this way and has demanded I find a child friendly reward/sanuction chart. In the past I have used zone boards, but obviously child friendly ones, with rainbow colours. Now as I was absent for the start of term, my head took it down and now wants something more creative. I was given the example of a branch and childrne have laminated leaves with names on, which when they do something posisitive they get to put their name on the tree. i'm struggling with this idea as when they have their name on the tree, I think they will revert back to previous behaviour and forget they need to maintain good behaviour to stay on the tree.

 

Can anyone help with any ideas about reward charts, which children can become involved in, that have been successfully used in classes.

I'm desperate for inspriration as these children are making moving the rest of the class on almost impossible as they need constant supervision and adult support.

 

please please help

 

Many thanks

 

Cat

[Guest]

I'm not going to be able to offer any assistance as I'm not feeling overly creative but it does seem unfair of the head to remove a system from your class room that you have found has worked in the past.

 

There is a race track to golden time on sparkle box that maybe you could adapt for year R then it follows their interest level as well.

[Upsy Daisy]

My daughter's school have a system where they are rewarded for respecting property by being sent to put their own laminated fish in a special box by the head's office. Each weekly sharing assembly when achievements are celebrated the head calls out the names of the children whose fish are in the box and they have to stand up for a round of applause. It does appear to work well as a motivator.

 

If you are concernt that they will lose motivation once their fish (why fish, I don't know) is in the box perhaps you could adapt it - perhaps have several fish for each child?

[Susan]

We use a traffic light system, everyone starts on green and move to orange and red with inappropriate behaviour after warnings. Very often I do not actually need to move any names and the ultimate sanction is to miss some playtime, which I do not implement very often. It does not always work but it is also a visual reminder to the children.

 

In reception, the teacher finds it more useful to have a whole class reward system with large playpit balls being added to a tube, or marbles in a jar and when it is full they get a special treat of some description.

 

Good luck. You probably need to take some time out from your learning to establish rules and routines with PSE focus. This will pay didvidends in the end.

[Cat22]

Thank you for all your help, I'm thinking I may go back to the zone board type, which is a traffic light system, everyone starts on green and can go up to gold, or down to orange then red. It's just so frustrating at moment and the head is putting an awful lot of pressure on now i'm back as apparently they were angels for the other three teachers!!!! Sorry for the moan, I'm having one of those down weekends!

[Susan]

Thats the worst bit then Cat. Dont let it get to you too much.

Did you settle this class at all? How did the other teachers work?

 

Id be taking time to re establish what I wanted and concentrating on that as PSE.

[Guest]

It is as if you are starting the year again so re-establishing ground rules is important. It doesn't seem very supportive of your head to tell you that the other teachers didn't have any problems - that just seems really harsh and not very professional really either.

 

Just focus on what you want the children to do, instigate something that you know will work and I'm sure you will win these children round. I had a really hard few weeks with one of the boys in my class and although he is not perfect he is also the child that makes me smile so much each day!