Developing Pupils’ Character
At Northfield St Nicholas Primary Academy the development of pupils’ character is extremely important and our ethos is clear, we believe that children come to school to be safe and that children come to school to learn. Through this strong ethos we employ a number of strategies to develop both learning behaviours but also the development of character. Some of these strategies are listed below:
- Our Restorative Practice approach https://nsnacademy.com/restorative-practice/ ensures that children feel and are safe. Our Restorative Practice Principles underpin all we do to make our school a kind, thoughtful, safe, interesting, stimulating, engaging, calm and focused learning environment to learn in. It is safe to explore ideas, ask questions, seek support, ask for guidance and acknowledge that mistakes are how we all learn as long as we reflect on what we need to change to find solutions, to grow and to develop as responsible human beings and future world citizens. At Northfield St Nicholas we use a restorative approach based on the four Rs:
- RESPECT: for everyone by listening to other opinions and learning to value them.
- RESPONSIBILITY: taking responsibility for your own actions.
- REPAIR: developing the skills within our school community so that its individual members have the necessary skills to identify solutions that repair harm and ensure behaviours are not repeated.
- RE-INTEGRATION: working through a structured, supportive process that aims to solve the problem and allows young people to remain in mainstream education.
- Check ins are used at least three times a day with all children to support them to articulate how they are feeling and to help us to track and monitor their wellbeing.
- Talk it out Triangles are used to support check ins to help children to articulate how they are feeling emotionally but also how they are feeling about their learning.
- Learning behaviours our eight learning behaviours (Improve, Work Hard, Try New Things, Understand Others, Don’t Give Up, Imagine, Concentrate, Push Yourself) are designed to support children to develop excellent attitudes to learning.
- Our bespoke A SUPERHERO curriculum- this seeks to motivate, support, enthuse and empower our children to learn about the near and wider world around them and encourage them to be curious and creative and articulate in the knowledge they acquire as they learn.
- Pupil Parliament we have a proactive pupil parliament who are democratically voted in at the start of the academic year and meet regularly.
- Debating children are encouraged to take part in healthy debate and discussion across the curriculum.
- Head Pupils and Ambassadors pupils in Year 6 have the opportunity to apply for these posts and when appointed take on extra responsibilities across the school.
- Classroom responsibilities all children will be allocated a range of classroom responsibilities across the course of the academic year.