Module 4

Section 5 Passing On Information

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State what happened, when doing this always try and remember or make a note (where possible) of the names of the children and staff involved. This not only makes your point clearer but also provides you with credibility especially if you have dealt with the situation alongside an additional member of staff.

Who to speak to and when?

When passing on information to parents and clients, make sure other parents or children are not within earshot. This is very important as an individuals privacy is something we need to respect at all times. If it is at the end of a club and it is difficult to isolate a parent, ask them to wait until the end so that you can have a word. Although they may not want to wait, once you have delivered the information they will always be a lot more appreciative that it was done privately as opposed to in front of other parents and friends.

Make sure you pass on any positive and negative behavior during your lunchtime club to the relevant teacher. We do this to help prepare and support them for their lessons in the afternoon. If a child or group of children have fallen out at lunch, 90% of the time this will carry on into the classroom. It is our responsibility to make the teacher aware so that when this happens they know the reason why and they can deal with it quickly and effectively.

Passing on what you consider as unusual behavior from a child may help teachers piece together other underlying issues.

For any serious incidents and accidents, as well as passing the information on to the relevant staff at the setting, you also need to inform your line manager – Chaz. This then enables us to check in with the setting to ensure the issue hasn’t continued and that it has been completely resolved. This really helps us maintain our fantastic relationship with the setting as we are seen to be actively trying to amend these issues.

Class Behaviour Management

For any of the techniques below to be effective, you need to make it clear at the start of your lesson or session how you expect them to react to a certain behaviour that you may do for example, if you clap a beat, they must repeat.

Clap to a beat and encourage the children to clap the beat back to you to show they are listening. Use a different beat each time you clap and continue this until you are happy that all the children in your group are at least attempting to copy the beat.

Use a chant the children copy with at the end of the chant expecting silence eg. Hands on top, that means stop. Shouting out the word ‘Attention’ for the children to say ’Silence’ is a great technique that has been shown to work with very difficult children due to it also being very interactive. - See Video Hub

Use your whistle! Within a school, the children will be older than in a nursery and should react very quickly to a whistle. This is a very effective tool to use to get a child’s attention in any setting. With the children being older you can incorporate your whistle into your session for it to be most effective e.g. 1 whistle means freeze, two whistles mean sit down where you are etc.

If the children in your group are not listening, sometimes the best way to say something is by saying nothing at all. Wait in silence for children to stop talking, explain to them that they are wasting their own time and once the children show respect the lesson can continue. I would always speak to any supporting staff before implementing this so that they can mimic you and reinforce the behavioural technique. Also if you don’t let them know what you are going to do they may think you don’t know what your doing and are struggling to control your group when in reality you are just implementing a new behavioural technique.

Separate problem children from one another. This can be done by employing the use of learning partners or just explaining to those children they may not work together due to their poor choices they make when together. For a new group of children that you may not be familiar with, ask your supporting teacher to highlight any pairs or groups that you have organised that may cause an issue. Your supporting staff will know which children work well together and which ones don’t so ask them for help.

Module 4 Quiz