Incredible Years

During the first half of the year I attended Incredible Years for Teachers. Incredible Years included six full day workshops based around positive classroom management strategies, building relationships with students and behaviour management. 

It was an excellent opportunity to connect with teachers from other schools, be reminded of useful classroom management techniques, as well as to come away with some fresh ideas. I found that it also really made me reflect on my teaching practice too. 

I've always focused a lot on rewarding positive behaviour in my classroom and building positive relationships with the children and their families. Carol often reminded us that you get more of what you focus on and I completely agree. Here are some of the ways I encourage and reward positive behaviour in my room. 

Our bucket filling display. See my post on bucket filling for more information. 

Class Do Jo or warm fuzzy awards as we call them are used to reward individual children. At the end of the week we use the random selector to select three winners, who need get to choose something out of the prize box. Visit www.classdojo.com to set up your own account. 

Throughout the week Room 2 earn sparkly pompoms for their jar. Once the jar is full all of the children vote on a whole class reward. This normally happens twice a term. 

I personally found Incredible Years really useful for adding to my bank of strategies for different types of behaviour e.g. engaging a child who would prefer to be rolling around on the floor, instead of doing his work or the bright spark with a short attention span. It was really beneficial to be able to speak to other teachers, in different schools who teach the same year level too. 



Here are the two teaching pyramids that were shared with us. 

Smidgens that I will take away 

• Always remember that you get more of what you focus on. 
• If you focus on successfully achieving the things at the bottom on the pyramid, you will have to use the strategies at the top of the pyramid very often. 
• Use proximity praise more often. 
• Focus on decreasing inappropriate behaviour, prior to using negative consequences e.g. use proximity praise, redirect, provide choices, ignore (but then acknowledge as soon as the right choice is made), use non verbal cues. As I've always believed, negative consequences should always be a last resort. Being provided with a bank of strategies to decrease inappropriate behaviour was really useful, as different strategies work for different children and different situations. 
• Incentives and rewards SHOULD be used!! Although we may love our job we wouldn't work if we didn't get paid. Just the same as most people possibly wouldn't take on more responsibility e.g. leadership roles within a school if they weren't getting paid extra for the time and additional workload. 
• Remember to make more time for the small things e.g. have lunch, a chat in the morning or kick a ball around at play time with a child that is displaying challenging behaviour in the classroom. Make the time to get to know each child as an individual. Those small things will make a big difference. 
• Communicate positive behaviour and achievements with families more regularly, not only when something goes wrong. So important!