Behaviour in the Early Years Foundation Stage

In the Early Years, there are six rules that underpin our learning, ensuring all pupils are happy, safe and ready to learn.  

They are:  

• Listen to others. 
• Share and take turns. 
• Walk sensibly and calmly. 
• Look after our toys. 
• Use kind hands.  

• Use an indoor voice.  

These rules are taught through exciting and engaging themes at the beginning of Nursery and Reception. We use story characters to make expectations clear and to embed the rules into the children’s long-term memories. Following the sharing of these stories, classes discuss how key characters behaved and how they can learn from them, as well as how they feel when rules are broken and what they can do to seek help. 

During more formal teaching times pupils are explicitly taught rules which develop into positive behaviours for learning, including how to: 

• Look  
• Listen  
• Sit with legs crossed and hands in lap. 
• Take turns to speak.  

The Characteristics of Effective Learning contribute to these positive behaviours for learning and lie at the core of our Early Years Practice. They are: 

• Playing and Exploring- learning to ‘have a go’, to risk take, explore and experience. 
• Active Learning- children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, they also learn to celebrate achievements. 
• Creating and Thinking Critically- children have and develop their own understanding, make links between ideas and develop strategies for doing things.  

The combination of our rules and the Characteristics of Effective Learning ensure that children are well prepared for Year One and beyond, ensuring all children are clear on what good behaviour looks like and how they can display ‘pro-social’ behaviours.  We believe the acquisition of these skills must be planned for and must not be left to chance if we are to realise our vision of ‘every child thriving every day’. When children make good choices that support their learning and behaviour, they have their photograph moved onto the ‘smile station’ happy face (a display in each EYFS classroom) and receive a sticker, which reads: ‘Ask me how I made my teacher happy today!’ to share their achievements with parents. 

We teach explicitly to show the children how to manage their own behaviour. Before addressing low level disruption, the children are addressed as a group using precise praise, e.g. ‘I like how you are sitting with your legs crossed.’ Visuals, gestures and examples are given so that each child knows what exactly is expected from them so that they have no room to ‘fail’. If required, the teacher will use group correction, e.g. ‘I am still waiting for a few children to show me crossed legs.’, before using our ‘reminder, warning, consequence’ system to address and manage inappropriate behaviour and low-level disruption. While this system is consistent across the school, ensuring consistency for our children, in EYFS the language will be simplified to reflect the vocabulary and age of the children, e.g. 

Reminder: ‘X, remember, at BH we use walking feet, thank you.’ 

If the behaviour does not improve, move on to the warning script. 

Warning: ‘X, this is a warning, walking feet or time out.’ 

• The child should then praised for making good choice and for compiling to the given instruction. 

If the behaviour still continues, move on to the consequence script. 

Consequence: ‘X, you did not use walking feet. Time out.’ 

• The child would leave the carpet for reflection time for 5 minutes onto a designated carpet spot with timer where they can still observe and listen to the learning. 

Following the consequence, the child re-joins the class. Praise is given for compliance, e.g. ‘Well done, X, you are using walking feet, thank you.’ 

If the child still is unable to make a good choice following the use our scripts, they would visit another classroom for 15 minutes. Following this, the practitioner who issued the consequence would support the child to reflect upon their behaviour and to think about how to make better choices. Parents would be informed, and a record would be kept.  

Some incidences may be of such a serious nature that the scripts would not be followed and instead, a member of SLT would be contacted to assist. Again, in this instance, parents would be contacted, and a record would be kept.