Pupil Habits and Behaviour Expectations
Everything good that happens in a school starts with a positive relationship between staff, pupils and parents. Those positive relationships come from a clear understanding of what is expected from everybody. Below you can see the habits pupils are supported in developing when it comes to four important aspects of learning:
1. Involvement
This is referring to the active participation of pupils in the lesson. Parents, pupils and the School Leadership Team (SLT) expect teachers to provide engaging, well-constructed lessons that support all pupils in stretching themselves to know and understand the curriculum being taught. To be successful with this, pupils are expected to be; punctual, properly equipped and show active, purposeful involvement throughout the lesson.
2. Knowledge
Through a pupil’s purposeful involvement in the teacher’s well-constructed lesson, pupils will gain a body of knowledge. They are expected to show that they are willing to try to use subject specific terms and demonstrate the skills needed to make a success of the curriculum being taught.
3. Self-Awareness
If we don’t know what’s expected of us, we’re unlikely to succeed in meeting expectations. Expectations of what pupils can do and should be striving to achieve are shared through feedback from the teacher and reports to/meetings with parents. Pupils are expected to be able to describe what they need to do to improve based on the feedback they’ve received.
4. Impact
We don’t tend to do very well at things we don’t care about. Pupils are expected to take pride in their work and to care about getting better at everything they’re asked to do. Parents will expect the school to reward and acknowledge the efforts their children are making and the school will take every opportunity to do precisely that.
Please click here to see a more detailed description of what the school’s expectations of pupils are.
Rewards and Sanctions: YARG
The school operates a simple and easily understood system for communicating whether the expectations are failing to be met or are being exceeded within a lesson. This is known in school as YARG. YARG stands for:
Y – Yellow: A clear warning that something about the behaviour of a pupil is failing to meet the expectations set out above.
A – Amber: Despite the clear warning given the behaviour shown continues to be below the teacher’s expectations. If an Amber is issued then a pupil will attend a detention during which they will be expected to reflect on how they got it wrong in the lesson.
R – Red: The behaviour shown continues to be below expectations, in addition to the breaktime sanction the pupil will now attend an after-school detention to reflect on what went wrong.
G – Green: The pupil has demonstrated they are exceeding the expectations as described above and is doing really well. The Green is a positive acknowledgement of that which builds towards a variety of rewards throughout the school year. Details of the SJS Rewards ladder can be seen here.
All of the above is communicated home to parents in the half termly HERBs report and can be viewed in real time through the Groupcall Expressions app.
The Gateway
Where a pupil is consistently failing to meet expectations and is attracting numerous Yellow, Amber and Red sanctions the pupil will be removed from lessons for a period of time. They will continue to follow their timetable with the support of a teacher but will do so in The Gateway. This will provide the pupil with the time to reflect on why things are not going as we all expect. It will also be an opportunity for parents and the teacher(s) to arrive at a way forward with the pupil so they can enjoy success and won’t interrupt the learning of others through poor behaviour. You can find more details of exactly how a pupil will be placed in The Gateway and what will be involved in that pupil exiting it to return to normal lessons here. Please click here to access The Gateway document.
