Our values
At Surrey Square we believe that children can achieve personal excellence through the teaching and modelling of values and skills. Our 6 values – Responsibility, Respect, Enjoyment, Community, Perseverance and Compassion – drive and shape every aspect of school life, and have taken the place of school ‘rules’. Our work in this respect has been acknowledged by many visitors (including, repeatedly, by Ofsted).
We believe that values underpin the person you are now and the person you aim to be in the future. They influence how you conduct yourself & behave towards others in every day life. As adults, we model the values and behaviours we would want to see from our children and we actively teach them in all aspects of school life. When children demonstrate our values it is recognised and rewarded in the following ways:
- Core value weekly certificates – children are nominated weekly by their class team for demonstrating a specific value theme that is taught in their core value weekly PSHE lesson.
- Stickers – children receive stickers when they have demonstrated any of the values. We encourage the children to share with adults what value they think they have shown and why they are receiving the sticker. This enables them to be able to articulate the behaviours they have shown.
- Postcards – children receive a postcard when they have shown any of the values through their behaviours and attitude towards their learning. They are recognised and celebrated in assembly and the postcards are sent home.
- Class DOJOs – children in KS2 can earn Dojo points in class by demonstrating positive behaviours such as helping others, working hard, being kind to others and making good progress during lessons, The child with the most DOJO points at the end of the week are rewarded and recognised in assemblies.
- Recognition behaviour chart – children in KS1 have a visual chart displayed in their class which lets them know what rewards they are working towards through the choices they are making.
- Shout outs – In assembly, children and adults have the opportunity to recognise and give someone a ‘shout out’ for doing something positive.
When a child is not making the right choices they have the opportunity to reflect by completing a core value reflection form. They identify the core values that they haven’t shown, how they are feeling, how their behaviour has made others feel and what they plan to do moving forward. They then have a restorative conversation with their adult who will also check to make sure the child is ready to move forward.
It’s about more than rules – it’s about making good choices
Children have got to have the ability to make decisions and choices themselves about the best way to behave in a situation. We will not always be there helping them to think it through. That is the key difference in our approach to values based learning; rules prescribe a set of appropriate/inappropriate context-specific behaviours, whereas values give a set of aspirational guidelines within which children must choose the right behaviour in any context.
Meet our core values characters
School values are like the colors of a rainbow that show us how to be kind, respectful, and helpful to everyone. They're like little stars that guide us to be the best versions of ourselves every day.
