Summary
Are you facing challenges in supporting young learners' social, emotional, and mental health needs in the Early Years classroom?
In this week's episode of School Behaviour Secrets, we tackle some of the pressing issues educators encounter in early years education.
Join us as we share five key areas to focus on in EYFS settings that can make a significant impact on children's social, emotional and mental health needs.
Important links:
Get our FREE SEND Behaviour Handbook: https://beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/send-handbook
Download other FREE behaviour resources for use in school: https://beaconschoolsupport.co.uk/resources.php
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Show notes / transcription
Emma Shackleton
Seeing pupils presenting challenging or complex behaviour needs at an even earlier age in your age school? Then keep listening because were going to give you five key areas to focus on in the early years and foundation stage to set your students up with SEMH success.
Simon Currigan
Welcome to the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. I'm your host, Simon Currigan. My co host is Emma Shackleton, and we're obsessed with helping teachers, school leaders, parents, and of course, students when classroom behaviour gets in the way of success. We're going to share the tried and tested secrets to classroom management, behavioural special needs, whole school strategy, and more, all with the aim of helping your students reach their true potential. Plus, we'll be letting you eavesdrop on our conversations with thought leaders from around the world, so you'll get to hear the latest evidence based strategies before anyone else. This is the School behaviour secrets podcast. Hi there.
Simon Currigan here. Welcome to this week's school behaviour secrets. While the Swotty educational podcasts are in class listening carefully to the teacher, we're playing hooky, hiding out at the back of the bike sheds, doing who knows what with the cool kids.
Meaning what exactly? You know, pretending to vape from the back of a USB stick or something because we're too scared to do it for real. You know, cool stuff with the cool kids. That's the sound of my cohost, Emma Shackleton. Hi, Emma.
Emma Shackleton
Hi, Simon.
Simon Currigan
I think using the phrase playing hooky proves that we're not cool in any way, shape, or form. Before we get into today's episode, Emma, I've got a quick question for you. What is your earliest memory of school?
Emma Shackleton
I was worried you were gonna ask me something about being a cool kid then. Earliest memory. Now that's a tricky one for me because I'm not great at looking back and remembering stuff. I tend to be looking forward and thinking about what's coming next, but I can remember quite vividly in my reception classroom when I was a little girl, my lovely teacher had a store cupboard with a really colorful bright curtain pulled across it. And on the very top shelf of the cupboard, she used to have a sweetie jar, and the children used to get a sweetie for being good. And I can really picture that jar really, really clearly. And it must have been a really special moment when she reached up behind that curtain to bring out the sweetie jar.
Simon Currigan
Do you know what? I think there's a correlation between the healthy schools movement in the late 1990's and when behaviour started to deteriorate in school. We need more sugar and carbohydrate and fried potato snacks in school, and behaviour just sorted itself out. It's simple, really. Politicians are listening to this at the DFE. That is what we need, more carbohydrate in school.
Emma Shackleton
Bring back the sweetie jar. Anyway, that was nostalgic. How is it linked to today's episode?
Simon Currigan
Today, we're gonna be talking about strategies to support children with SEMH and behaviour difficulties in the early years foundation stage. So that's children between the ages of 3 and 5 before they sort of settle into a more formal education.
Emma Shackleton
Brilliant. But before we get to that, if you've been listening to the show and have found the strategies and behaviour insights helpful, please don't keep it to yourself. Share the podcast with a friend. All you've got to do is open your podcast app, click the share button, and send this episode to a friend or colleague who you think would also find it useful, or even share it on your social media feed.
Simon Currigan
While you've got your podcast app open, if you haven't done it already, remember to hit the subscribe button so you never miss another thing.
Emma Shackleton
And both of those actions really help the podcast to grow, and you'll be helping us share this information with other teachers, school leaders, and parents who'd also really benefit.
Simon Currigan
That said, it's time to bend over, take a deep breath. Don't worry. Don't worry. It it if you got kids in the car, it is PG. That said, it's time to bend over, take a deep breath, and crank the handle of the rusty old Ford Model T we call behaviour.
Emma Shackleton
Okay. So thinking about it, Simon and I go into many, many schools on a day to day basis where we're called in to help them to support the staff with helping to support the children with behaviour and SEMH needs. And over the years, our demographic has really changed. It used to be the case that the majority of our face to face work was referrals about older children, particularly in primary, so year 5, year 6, and some of the children in secondary schools too. But the profile of our work is really changing now. What we're finding is more than ever, especially post COVID, we are getting referrals for younger and younger children. So quite a significant proportion of our work now is actually helping schools to help little ones rather than the older children in school. So I've mentioned COVID there because I know we'd all like COVID to go away, but I think COVID has had a really significant impact on these little children. So if you think about it, these were the moms and babies who missed out on things like stay and play, baby groups. So the children didn't get to socialize so much from an early age. Maybe they were restricted from who they could see in their family and their friends, And also the support network for the moms and dads and carers was also taken away.
So new parents didn't get to be around other new parents and see other parenting methods and support each other. And I think that's had a really profound impact on the little children that we've got starting school now.
Simon Currigan
Yeah. When I think about my work, we're just seeing more and more kids who are just poorly socialized. They don't know how to get on, how to share. And I know sharing's always been an issue with little children, but it seems to be exacerbated recently in terms of they communicate aggressively because they haven't learned basic language skills. There are more children in school who are preverbal than ever before, and you also see, interestingly, more and more children who aren't toilet trained. And I think that's really interesting because I think that speaks to where parents were 3 or 4 years ago.
So you look at the family, there might be, you know, 1 or 2 older siblings. They all came into school toilet trained. So the parents had the capacity and were capable of doing that, but it might be that their youngest coming into school now isn't. And I think that tells us something about the anxiety and stress and the difficulties that those parents were going through when the child was much younger. And, of course, all of that additional needs, as we talked about a couple of episodes ago, actually, when we talked about SEND hubs, has a knock on in terms of staffing and how we train and support those staff to manage the needs of the children who are currently walking through their doors.
Emma Shackleton
Yeah. Behaviour certainly seems to be changing with those little ones. So I think schools are also reporting a real escalation in behaviours now. So they're seeing children who are clearly much more anxious.
Maybe they're more tearful, for example. They might be struggling to separate from their carers more than you would expect at an age appropriate level. So beyond what is normal for a child of their age, I guess, is what we're seeing here. So an increase in children having meltdowns, maybe trashing classrooms, getting very overwhelmed, lashing out to their peers, lashing out to adults. I was talking to, the CEO of a multi academy trust the other day, and and she was saying that more and more of the staff in her schools are coming to her now asking for things like bite guards for their arms because more children are biting. That's showing a level of distress there, well, with the adults and with the children that does seem to have escalated. We're also getting more little ones who are running away, maybe hiding, they don't want to engage, or they can't engage with the adults so well. And some children coming in, their basic needs haven't been met, so they might be falling asleep, they might be overly hungry, and definitely a rise in aggression. So biting, I've already mentioned, lashing out at peers, lashing out at adults as well.
And these behaviours are tough. They're tough to deal with, and it just feels like we're getting more and more of them, especially with those little new starters to school.
Simon Currigan
I think what's especially tough if you're in the early years foundation stage is there's a lot of training and support out there, but it it tends to be pitched at older children. If you're working in secondary, you're working with kids in primary, even key stage 1, you know, kids from age sort of 5, 6, 7, above. There's lots of information out there for you. But when you actually look at that information and say, well, what do we do with kids who are younger than that, kids in nursery and reception? Actually, it's harder to get hold of good quality advice and information to meet the needs of the kids that you're working with. So today is our aim to address that. So we're gonna give you 5 well, they're not strategies, but they're 5 areas to focus on to support the kids that you're working with that have social, emotional, and mental health needs if you are working in the early years foundation stage.
So, Emma, should we start with auditing the environment?
Emma Shackleton
Yeah. Let's kick off with the environment. I think when behaviours are extreme, it's really easy to get sucked down the rabbit hole of focusing on that individual child, that individual behaviour. And it's really hard when you're in it to see beyond that. But one thing I've learned over the years is the power of making adjustments to the environment. So sometimes small things that we do to the space that we're working in can have a really, really big impact across the board. And it's a good way of sorting out lots of other behaviour niggles as well. So start by taking a step back and really have a look at the environment that the children are in.
So typically, what I see and I started teaching in early years. Certainly back then, it was very much like this. In an early years class room, it tends to be very, very busy. So I mean busy in terms of people, sounds, visuals, colors.
We tend to go a bit bonkers with brightness. Lots of the classrooms, when I started teaching, there was a real big phase of hanging things from the ceiling. It tends to have phased out a little bit now, I think maybe because of fire concerns and smoke alarms.
Simon Currigan
Can I just say at this point, I can't count the times I've nearly garotted myself? The washing line style display across the classroom.
Emma Shackleton
Oh, absolutely. There was a real trend, and I think we are moving away from that for sure, and lots of schools are now starting to pair things back. Lots of schools are doing things like using neutral colours, having hessian backgrounds, going for wooden toys now instead of plastic and brightly coloured toys, but that does take time and money. And often, the early years classrooms are still the busiest. They are full of stuff, There's a lot going on, and that can be quite a stressor. I used to love teaching in early years, and now when I go in and do observations in early years classrooms, sometimes I feel a little bit overwhelmed, and I feel a bit like, wow.
Ask me some earmuffs because it it is. It's great, and it's stimulating, and it's exciting, and it's engaging, but it can also be overwhelming, overstimulating, over exciting, and it can be too much, can't it? So it's great for a lot of children, but for any children with sensory sensitivities, any children who are feeling stressed or anxious or overwhelmed already, this is like if their stress bucket is full when they arrive, when they walk through the door into all of that noise and movement and stimulation, that can only add to that bucket. And this is where you sometimes see children, you know, they're having meltdowns within the first 5 or 10 minutes of the day because they've got here, they're already at their limits for a whole host of reasons, and then they come into this extremely busy, loud, stimulating environment, and it's just too much for them to cope with.
Simon Currigan
I think what's interesting with EYFS I don't know if you agree, Emma, but the way you look at the way EYFS has developed over the years. So when I started teaching 1997, there was a more traditional approach to reception teaching where the kids would sit down as a class and perhaps do some work as a class. There'd be opportunities to play, but, also, it was slightly more formal. And I'm not saying that was the right approach, but then we moved to a very open, noisy, child led approach, which worked for lots and lots of children.
But I think EYFS has got quite dogmatic about this is the approach we take. It must be good for all pupils. And you don't really see that in other age groups in primary schools or secondary schools. It's much more about what are the needs of the children and how do we respond to those. But for some reason, whenever you go into the EYFS classroom, I don't know whether it's coming from government or Ofsted or whatever it is. It's much more dogmatic about this is the way it must be, this is good for all children instead of kind of responding to children's needs as they walk through the door.
Emma Shackleton
Yeah. You're right. Because each year group coming in will have different needs as well. But I I think the way to counter this and lots of schools are on the right track already, and there's lots of talk and interest and research about making our classrooms more neurodiverse friendly, it is about ensuring that the environment is stimulating and interesting, but also balancing that. So things like making sure that you have got quiet areas and actually teaching the children what that means. So we know you can't just hang a sign up and say, this is the quiet area because you're still gonna get kids rolling around in there and play fighting and shouting and running around. So you have to train them into what those different zones mean, what they look like, what they sound like, how they are to be used, just like you're doing with all of the other equipment in early years. So making sure that we've got quiet spaces. I'm a big advocate of having quiet times as well, and I see a lot of EYFS teachers who are stressed because it is noisy and busy in their environment. So actually building in structured, brief, mindful moments with the whole class where everybody stops and everybody takes a breath and you start to teach those basic regulation skills, that really benefits everybody in the class, including the adults who are often also feeling quite frazzled by the demands of everything that they've got going on in that classroom. So little quiet pockets within the room, but also quiet moments within the day where everybody is actively encouraged to stop, take a breath.
Maybe they put their hands on their heart and their tummy, and they learn how to regulate their breathing. They learn how to reset. That's a great life skill for everybody in that environment.
Simon Currigan
Yeah. I think we all need a bit of that, don't we?
Emma Shackleton
Definitely. And it's hard when you're the teacher in there because you're on a treadmill. You're rushing. You you know you've gotta get through this and that and this, and then it's gonna be hands washed, toilets, go to lunch. And it's easy to be on that treadmill and feel very rushed. So it's useful to build in those quiet moments.
Simon Currigan
Okay. The first approach or the first area to look at is audit your environment to see if it's working for all your pupils. We're not saying you have to throw out everything. What we're saying is see if you have pupils who have difficulty with that environment, then what do we do that's different for them or supports them to do well in that environment?
Number 2 is limit choices if necessary. So let's think about what happens in the average EYFS reception, nursery, classroom. Yeah. There's about 8 or 9 different activities out. Children can free flow between activities indoor or going outside, and that is a lot of choice. Now for most kids, that choice is absolutely appropriate.
It works well for them. They can learn and experience new things. They can develop socially and emotionally. That is absolutely great, and we are absolutely not saying take that away. However, for some pupils, and they're often children with SEMH needs, who find that lack of structure to be completely overwhelming. There is just too much choice, and they're not sure what to do, and they find it hard to make those decisions, and that increases their anxiety and stress. So it might be for some children giving limited choices for their play options can be really effective. So when I say give a limited choices, what do I mean? So that means you might walk over to the child and say, oh, we've got x, y, and z out today. Let's start by picking between going outside and using the tricycles or staying inside and working at the painting table and doing a painting for instance. So what I'm doing is I'm taking the 10 complex overwhelming choices and limiting them down to 1 of 2 to make it easy for the child to choose between.
Let's do some painting or let's go outside on the tricycles. Then I can sort of talk to them about which they'd enjoy the most and set them up for success again by going out and helping them start that activity or giving them a couple of minutes of pre tutoring if necessary. And that just takes away some of the complexity and some of the choice that can actually remove a lot of the anxiety that children who find choice or overwhelming choice difficult.
Emma Shackleton
Yeah. Totally. I was just thinking as you were talking there, Simon, we mustn't underestimate the effect of the difference between the child's home environment and the school environment. So for children in quite deprived areas, they might have very little to play with at home.
There might not be any books. There might not be many toys. There might not be a lot of stuff. And if this is the first environment that they've been into outside of their home or the family's home, again, it's going to be really overwhelming because, suddenly, there's just tons and tons and tons of stuff.
So I think you're right. Definitely limiting the amount of resources that's available, especially in the first instance, and then helping children to make those choices. That can really help.
Simon Currigan
Even as adults in social psychology, there's something called the paradox of choice, which is as an adult when we walk into a shop, if we're given too many options, we find it really hard to make a decision. I once went into a national chain of pizza restaurants, and all I wanted was a ham and mushroom pizza. And I got offered meal deals and this, that, and the other, and I could have x, y, and zed, or I could go to the buffet and do x, y, and zed. You know? And I was like, but I just want a ham and mushroom pizza. And they were like, you can't have a ham and mushroom pizza if you have the buffet deal because then you won't get an extra drink. And I actually just ended up walking away. There was just too much choice, and I wasn't quite sure I'd ever get what I want. And when you look at a company like Apple, they only give you a very limited number of iPhones to choose from. You've only got a set number of colours and a couple of different models because that makes making a choice easy. Too much choice actually paralyzes even adults, and you're not sure what to do, and that's stressful.
So if you're seeing children in the EYFS stage who are finding all those choices stressful actually remember even as adults, we struggle with the paradox of choice.
Emma Shackleton
Absolutely. And thinking about what you said about walking away there, Simon, that's how the children sometimes show us, isn't it? Because if they haven't got a lot of vocabulary, we're trying to guess all the time about what's driving their behaviour. So if you've got children who are frozen, who are walking away, who are very flitty beyond what would be age appropriate, they are communicating to you through their behaviours that this is too much for them. That's the way to sort of cue in to, is this right for this child?
Simon Currigan
Okay. So let's jump into area number 3, which is to help the child manage transitions. And when we're talking about transition here, it could be moving from activity to activity. It could be moving from area to area. It could be moving from adult to adult. Any form of transition can, in some students, drive anxiety and stress, and then they find it difficult to cope and then you get children melting down or running away or even engaging in what looks like aggressive behaviour because they're not sure what to do in that situation.
They don't have the skills to cope in it. So we need to look out for those students, how we help them manage those transitions and prepare for them. And a classic way of doing that is and now a next board is just a simple board. It could be like a mini whiteboard with a vertical line down the middle. And on the one side at the top of that on the left hand half, you've got the word now. And on the right hand side at the top of the board, you've got the word next. And then you've put a little at this age, it would be a small picture or a widget or a symbol that indicates what they've chosen to do now. And on the next side of the board, you've got a little symbol that indicates what they can expect next so they can prepare for it. So if it's gonna be going out to play or getting their coats or having a snack, in their head, they know, a, what to expect because in your head, if you don't know what's happening next, that can be a little bit scary or a little bit frightening if you're a little person. And, also, if it's something that you find difficult, then actually it gives you a chance to mentally prepare for it.
It's a really simple strategy that can support kids with transitions, especially in EYFS really, really effectively.
Emma Shackleton
And now and next is really helpful. If their child is doing something now that they don't really like so maybe it's phonics now, and they're not really keen on phonics, but next, it's gonna be playing outside, which they love. It can make the now a little bit more tolerable, because they know that that's gonna finish soon, and they're gonna be going on to something else. Yeah. And I think you're right. We've got to do lots of over communicating about what is going on. The adults in school are very good at keeping in their head the timetable. They know they can tell the time. They know how long they've got to do this, how long they've got to do that, when it's gonna be tidy up time. They know what's coming next, and they know how long they've got to do it. But time feels different to some children And even children who've been in the setting for a long time, we mustn't assume that that means that by osmosis, they've learnt the timetable that's in our head.
We've got to keep on talking about what is coming up next, What's happening now? What's happening next? And some children really, really struggle with starting things and some children really, really struggle with finishing things.
And I get this. If you're in the middle of doing something that you love and all of a sudden somebody claps their hands and says, right. That's it. It's done. And you're not done with it, it can be really hard to walk away from that. So a little tip can be to have a finish later box or some way of saving things for later. Things like when the children are using construction, like Lego, for example. If they're halfway through building something and they've got to a really good point with it, it can feel a bit mean to just crush it all up and say, that's the end of that. So having rules around how long can we keep something for, if we are saving something for later, what's the rule? Is it that we can save it for later in the day, but then at the end of the day, all of the LEGO is broken down and we start again tomorrow? It's just putting in little systems and rules to help children with stopping and starting.
And there are lots of stops and starts in a day. And for some children, that's really, really stressful.
Simon Currigan
I don't know about you, Emma, but what I found is having a can be finished later box is useful because it gives the child reassurance that they can come back to it. But in reality, they rarely do.
Emma Shackleton
Yes.
Simon Currigan
It just reduces the anxiety about stopping something halfway through.
Emma Shackleton
I think it also switches their thinking. They just get diverted. It's less stressful, isn't it, to feel like the option is there, as you say, even if they don't bother coming back to it.
Simon Currigan
I think the last thing with transition as well is if your child has working parents. So when my children were younger, what we would do at home is we would talk through with the child in the morning who would be picking them up at the end of the day.
Sometimes it might be me. Sometimes it might be my wife. Sometimes it might be their grandparents just depending on the day of the week and the flow of our work patterns. And for children, actually, it's surprising that when they don't know who is picking them up or if they can't remember, then that can be actually quite anxiety provoking, especially for little children. So it might be worth liaising with working parents so that the child can have a reminder about who's coming for them at the end of the day and that they won't be abandoned and that there will be someone there to care for them. That can actually provide them with loads of reassurance, and it could be the parent does that at home, or they let you know if you know that fuels the child's anxiety. So you can give them that little bit of reassurance on the now and next board. And at the end of the day, it's your granny coming to pick you up.
Emma Shackleton
Do you know I've seen this done really well recently in a reception class where the teacher works out that one of the little boys was feeling upset and anxious actually for most of the day because he wasn't sure whether it would be mommy or daddy or whether he was going with the child minder on that day. And to rectify this, they made a really, really simple timetable, and they used photographs. So they just had a photograph of each adult, and they popped the photograph on.
And he had that. It was accessible to him all the time. He could go over and look at it. Every day, the adults just quickly talked it through with him, showed him what day it was today. In fact, they had a little arrow, so he knew that that was today. And then they had the photograph of who was collecting him, and that just gave him reassurance. He didn't have to think about it anymore. He didn't have to worry about it anymore, and he was able to feel calmer and more relaxed at school.
Simon Currigan
So the next area to focus on is really about not making any assumptions about the child's ability to use language. And it's really interesting that children with SEMH needs, those needs are still best predicted not by demographics about where they live, about family income, whether they're entitled to free school meals, about whether they're single or, you know, multiparent families or or whatever that is. The single best predictor of a child having SEMH needs is still their ability to use language. And I guess when you think about it, that makes sense, doesn't it, Emma?
Emma Shackleton
Oh, absolutely. I mean, simple things like being able to understand and process the instructions, and children are given a lot of instructions in a day. If you are having trouble with doing that and you can't understand what's happening around you, of course, you're going to feel worried or frightened or frustrated. And equally, if you haven't got the language to be able to communicate what you need or what you want, if you feel like the adults aren't tuned into you and don't get you and don't understand you and they can't meet your needs, that's really frustrating and annoying. So, of course, the way that children and adults show frustration and annoyance is through their behaviour.
So it's really, really confusing. And if they're struggling to process what's happening, if they're not keeping up with routines, if they're not picking up on social cues, as well as those language cues, the world and and the classroom can feel quite scary and unpredictable. And we know that the way that we feel drives the way that we behave.
Simon Currigan
So what we need to be doing now more than ever, I think it's particularly pressing now, is looking at how we implement language screening to pick up on those needs early on, almost as the kids are walking through the doors in September for the first time doing some deep assessment, structured assessment, and you can get these from a variety of providers. You don't need to be a speech and language therapist to run some of these assessments to look for underlying difficulties with speech and language. Now when we talk about speech and language, remember, you've got speech which is your ability to articulate yourself, and that's broken down into and I'm not a speech and language therapist, but you've got the formation of the words, but also being to articulate your thoughts. And then you've got receptive language, which is your ability to understand what other people are saying to you and making sense of it. And we need to be doing screening and close assessments to pick up those needs early on because if the child's got needs, then they are going to need support in the classroom. They're gonna need strategies to understand what's happening so they don't get scared. Language needs, of course, they don't always indicate that there's a correlating social, emotional, or mental health need, but the data is strong. And if they've got language difficulties and we know about that early on, we can put support strategies in place to help them from day 1 or day 2 or day 3, very early intervention strategies. And then we're much less likely to see difficulties with behavior. So Emma was talking about biting before. Biting is often a way of communicating that I'm upset and I don't know what to do or I'm angry and I don't want to do.
So, yeah, language screening is massively important.
Emma Shackleton
And don't forget for children with language difficulties, wherever we can, back up the words that we say with symbols. I do think that Early Years practitioners are quite good at this, and this is a strategy that I often recommend much beyond Early Years. Too much of teaching is reliant on the adult speaking. And for lots and lots of children, they are struggling to keep up with all of that language. They're struggling to process all of that, and it's cognitive overload. So at least where we can have symbols, where we can have visuals, where we can use photographs, that takes away the reliance on processing all of that language. And the beauty as well, if you've got a photograph, say, the children have a particular lining up order, for example, and you get them all in order, and you take photograph of the line and you display that photograph by your classroom door, that's there all of the time then. So you don't have to keep on talking about lining up order.
There's a visual there. When you speak a word, it goes into the air, and then it disappears with a photograph or a symbol. That's there as a permanent reminder. And lots of children, not just the ones who are struggling with language processing, lots of children benefit from having an environment that is rich in symbols and photographs, guiding them in the in the things that you want them to do, setting them up for success.
Simon Currigan
We're gonna move on to the 5th area to focus on now, and that is teaching and routines and behaviours very, very explicitly. And by explicitly, I mean, clearly, not by shouting and swearing at the children Gordon Ramsay style when they get it wrong. So for the children that we see in our classrooms that can't follow or don't follow the social expectations or the classroom routines, things like putting up their hand and waiting to speak or getting in the right place in the line, then what we need to do is teach them how to do it broken down step by step by step, making no assumptions about any previous learning. So let's take lining up to go out to play. We're gonna break that down into its most basic constituent steps and talk the child through the steps 1 by 1 by 1. So that might be standing up from the carpet, going over to the photo to remind yourself of where you stand in the line, who should be in front of you, who should be behind you, walking to the right place in the line, making sure that you're maybe giving the person in front and behind, you know, about a foot and a half worth of space so you're not invading their personal space, what to do with your hands so you're not playing with the hair of the little girl in front of you and get annoying her, you know, and perhaps standing quietly or looking at the adult in front so you know when the door is gonna be open so you can follow the rest of the class out. Breaking everything down really, really simply and talking those steps through and backing them up with visuals, as Emma said, is absolutely key to making sure our kids do understand what they are expected to do so they can do it when it's the right time in the classroom when they have the trigger.
So if someone's lining up, the trigger might be the teacher rings a little bell or has a certain phrase she uses. So they know the trigger, and then they know what to do in response to the trigger.
Emma Shackleton
Yes. And lots of early years practitioners do this already. They use I do, we do, you do as a really great modelling technique, and that's been proven to be effective. And then, of course, we've got to practice and practice and practice some more. We can't just teach the children how to do this in September and then expect that they'll crack it. We've got to revisit. We've got to be consistent. We've got to consistently expect the children to follow the routines, and we've got to consistently show up and reteach those routines and reinforce those routines. And we can pre chew to the children. We can cue them in to using the skills before they're needed. So as Simon said, using things like a sound or a word or a hand gesture, always training the children into what that cue is and then using that cue every single time.
That's a really great way to get children set up for success.
Simon Currigan
And you said something about there about, reinforcing it as well. Make the child feel good, like they've achieved something from making even small steps towards following those routines because then they're gonna be more likely to repeat that behaviour in the future.
Emma Shackleton
And the more that the children feel confident with the routines, the more that they feel safe and secure and that the world at school is predictable, the lower their stress levels will be and the more successful they can be. So there are our top five ways of supporting children with SEMH needs in the early years foundation stage.
Simon Currigan
Audit the environment.
Emma Shackleton
Limit choices down if necessary.
Simon Currigan
Manage transitions.
Emma Shackleton
Don't make assumptions about the child's ability to use language.
Simon Currigan
And teach routines and behaviours to children really explicitly if they need it.
Emma Shackleton
I hope you found that useful. That's all we've got for today. If you found the episode helpful, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave us a review. That will prompt the algorithm to actively show the podcast to other teachers, school leaders, and parents who might find it useful as well, and that helps us to grow the show.
Simon Currigan
Reviewing will make you feel like the cat who's got the cream. Nauseous. Cats are lactose intolerant.
Emma Shackleton
Don't say that. Nobody will leave us a review.
Simon Currigan
Definitely leave us a review. Cats have it great. My cat Mittens gets fed twice a day, gets given loads of snacks by my kids, hangs around the house sleeping all the time. I work all day to give my cat the life that I dream of. If that's the life that you dream of, leave a review. Makes a total sense. The people listening know what I'm talking about. If you know what I'm talking about, if you want to live the life of my cat Mittens, put that down in a review with a heart emoji and slap 5 stars on it.
It's what my cat would do.
Emma Shackleton
And that just about wraps it up for today. I hope you have a brilliant week, and we both look forward to seeing you next time on School Behaviour Secrets. Bye for now.
Simon Currigan
Bye.
(This automated transcript may not be 100% accurate.)
