Our Approach to Behaviour...
At Portland School we adopt a unique and sensitive approach to the behaviour difficulties that our students experience.
Staff adopt the mantra of 'All Behaviour is Communication'. This means when we see negative and challenging behaviours, we aim to support the young person and detect why the behaviour is occurring.
Often our young people struggle to verbalise why they feel they way they do and behaviour is often the first indication that something is wrong.
Therefore, when students are upset, we work to help students regulate and communicate, rather than apply sanctions when they get it wrong.
We employ a number of different approaches to help our students...
Resolve Support
- "Students cannot access the curriculum until they are ready to do so". In fact, many of the EHCPs our students have contain similar phrases. As learning is often associated with negative prior experiences, we have to provide our young people with support to get them ready to learn.
- This support may be needed because of the emotions experiences after negative interactions with others or can occur when students have developed particular feelings towards certain learning experiences.
- As such when students cannot learn, we do not try and force them.
- Our RESOLVE room is a fully staffed 'mentoring' room and regulation space where students can 'decompress' and regulate they are too emotionally aroused to access learning. Staff members will provide support to help students regulate and take steps necessary to get ready for learning.
Our Walking Curriculum & KICK
- Our 'Walking Curriculum' exists to provide support to young people who need support regulating but cannot do so in a classroom environment. Many of our young people experience benefits from exercise and there are pronounced benefits in engaging in physical activity at time of distress.
- We employ a number of Behaviour Support workers to provide young people with access to sporting activities which they can access at times of distress to help prepare them for learning. We additionally work with an external company 'KICK - Click Here for More Information', to provide students with support and mentoring when they are not ready for learning.
Social & Emotional Literacy Curriculum
- We don't just work in a 'reactive' way to support our young people. Upon entry, staff complete a bespoke 'Social & Emotional Literacy Questionnaire' devised by the team at Portland. Here we assess the Social & Emotional age of our young people and identify underlying difficulties that they have.
- Throughout their time at Portland, students engage in whole-school interventions to address deficits in 'self-awareness', 'social awareness', 'relationships skills', 'self management' & 'responsible decision making'.
Portland Values
Our 'Portland Values' of 'Inclusive, Responsible, Respectful, Resilient & Ambitious' provide a framework used to equip students with a clear understanding of desirable behaviours. Operationalised within each Form Group, students learn about the behaviour that embodies each value and why these behaviour are important.
We use 'Class Dojo' to encourage and reward these behaviour when they occur.