Thanks to Tom Sherrington for sharing …much wisdom here!
In a couple of schools I’ve visited – including Bedford Free School when I visited in April – they use a card system for all minor transgressions. In every lesson, if students do everything they are meant to, they give themselves a tick; if not, the teacher marks their card. At the end of the week, students with 100% ticks get a reward – they go home earlier than those students with less than perfect cards who stay on for an additional study period. It was a powerful motivation to keep meeting expectations; a system students valued. And it worked incredibly well.
At another school, they had really cracked the issue of students missing central detentions after school. Anyone missing would have an internal exclusion the next day running 10am to 5.00pm – so the missed detention was wrapped in. Very well structured work was provided in the behaviour centre. They would not be allowed to attend lessons until this day was completed, however long it took. By sticking to this absolutely – even when students were absent for days avoiding the internal exclusion – they had brought numbers of detention-duckers down to a tiny handful. This meant that fewer students would then get detentions and everything was improving on a positive spiral.
#education #positive #behaviour #management