Calling in extraterrestrial help for pupil behaviour

Creative Partnerships at the Centre for Community Engagement - Sussex and Surrey

Brighton-based Enquiry School, Whitehawk Primary, chose to investigate how they could improve the behaviour of Year 1 boys through developing the pupils’ understanding of play and through developing a series of new games with the pupils. Among the methods the school used was introducing the Year 1s to a pupil-sized puppet character, 'Silverboy'. The character was introduced to the children as having just arrived from another planet and their job was to help him understand how to play and be kind to other people.

Project objectives

The school wanted to investigate the relationship between children's play skills, independent and co-operative play, and levels of aggressive and inappropriate behaviour in the playground.
By encouraging and developing principles to play and co-operation within the class and during playtime the school aimed to:

• improve pupils’ behaviour and motivation
• provide the children with skills to deal with conflict resolution
• create a calmer atmosphere at playtime
• encourage emotional literacy
• develop play skills, for example turn taking, sharing, listening, fun, imagination, and encourage pupils to enjoy taking part rather than wanting to win
• build on the relationship between the school and pupils’ parents
• create an atmosphere of belonging and inclusion

The project linked directly to Whitehawk’s school improvement plan targets around behaviour and motivation in the school and focused on finding creative avenues in which the children could develop new strategies to respond to a variety of situations in and out of the classroom. The school hoped by developing these play skills the children would develop new behaviour patterns that would help them throughout their school day.

Who was involved?

The school worked with creative practitioner Sharon Mee from Same Sky Same Sky, who used storytelling and roleplay to help the children devise new games and skills for the playground, incorporating ground rules for playing safely and fairly.

The Year One pupils created and learned rules for playing new games, identified the skills needed for teaching games and how to work as a team. As well as the class teachers and teaching assistants, the project also involved midday supervisors, parents, carers and wider family members. Each family received a take-home pack with a camera and book to teach games at home and when parents were invited in to the school to learn the games there was an 80 per cent increase in their attendance from previous invitations.

Through a mentor programme, Years One and Five worked together to teach other children school games, and children from Year Five were involved in evaluating the project, filming children at playtime to assess which games worked well. Working from the film footage they took, they helped Year 1 pupils identify which games were most successful and then went on to develop new games based on their research.

Impact

Outcomes of the project included improved behaviour and motivation, and the pupils developed skills to deal with conflict resolution and created a calmer atmosphere at playtime.

At the outset, the school hoped the result of the project would be a 50 per cent reduction in incidents of negative behaviour in the playground. Recovery Room data for Year One showed a reduction in behavour problems in Year 1, showing a drop from the Autumn Term, in which Year One accounted for 18.4 per cent of behaviour problems in school, to 3.5 per cent in the Summer Term.

The school ascertained children involved had become more emotional literate and had developed play skills including turn taking, sharing and listening. The school also experienced increased support from parents. Subsequent to the project, Whitehawk developed a scheme of work to support the legacy of the project in which the pupils involved will take their experiences from the project when they go into Year Two as Playtime Leaders.

The school also found, when parents were invited in to the school to learn the games, there was an 80 per cent increase in attendance.

Quotes

When asked what they thought of the project the Year 5 children said it was "fun", "crazy", "a good experience to do a project like this" and "it's been like a journey".

The Year 5 children enjoyed creating the narrative thread to the arrival of 'Silver Boy' and devising the subsequent treasure hunt for Y1s to find him:

"It was really good - Year 1 got really excited when they found a clue."

"They loved the cameras and kept smiling at the camera group."

"Year 1 are very excited at being with us."

"It was a really exciting, a really fabulous experience, I was really sad when it ended and would love to do it all again'. 'You could see what the younger children liked and what they were interested in."

The children felt that the teachers had learned from communicating with new people, especially someone as 'clever' as Sharon. They pointed to the fact that the project was so good partly due to everyone getting on so well together.

"This project is 'different for sir, he doesn't have to look at a planning sheet."

"He is enjoying it, he smiles a lot more now and it lasts the rest of the week."