At Shirley Juniors, we want all our children to have a sense of belonging within our school community, developing their self-confidence and self-worth. We truly believe that through building connections and celebrating our pride of ourselves and others, children become the very best versions of themselves, which help them to not only be the very best learners but also develop into active and responsible citizens.

The Good Morning Club

To support with this, we are proud to be a TGMC school. TGMC, or ‘The Good Morning Club’, is an approach that uses building connections, positive psychology, and emotional regulation to create calmer, more positive, more purposeful, more engaged learning environments.

TGMC in 5 Lines:

Curious not Furious

Regulate to Educate

Connection over Correction

Connect the Dots

Theorise and then Systemise

In all of our classrooms, regulation backpacks are used to support the emotional regulation of all children. Children are taught how to recognise their emotions within brain school sessions and then learn about the ‘backpacks’; different strategies which they can use to support them depending on how they are feeling.

We end our week by celebrating our successes in assembly, sharing our appreciations for each other. The children also have time to share what they are proud of this week, with each class creating a ‘proud post’ which is shared with our school community.

The video below, by the founder of TGMC Jen Foster, explains what TGMC is all about, how it can help our pupils and what to expect from it:

Please see the page attached, or follow this link, to our own SJS TGMC podcast, to hear more from our children and staff about all things regulation and backpacks, and how TGMC continues to improve the wellbeing of all in our school community.

Behaviour and Attitudes

We are an emotionally literate school where pupils develop the skills of self-regulation and learning from mistakes by repairing and reflecting. We foster a sense of belonging and acceptance, so children grow to become honest, responsible citizens of their community.

Everybody at Shirley Junior School is a leader of behaviour. We have adopted a Distributive Leadership approach to support pupils with challenging behaviour so that all staff support behaviour and are aware of their roles and responsibilities, including Governors, Senior leaders, teachers and support staff. 

We understand that behaviour needs to be taught. All our teaching reflects the Equality Act 2010 ensuring there is no discrimination for any pupil or family with protected characteristics. Adults in the school aim to develop their relationships with all children so that children feel cared for and are happy to receive influence from the adults around them, in the classroom and on the playground. Our visual, one-page policy for behaviour and attitudes can be seen below:

When conflicts occur, we use a restorative approach called Repair and Rebuild. The children involved ask and answer the questions in the following order:

• What happened?
• What were you thinking at the time?
• How were/are you feeling?
• Who do you think has been affected?
• What needs to happen to put things right?
• Does there need to be an action?
• Rewards and celebrations

We also have many ways to celebrate and reward children for both their learning and behaviour across our school. These include: 

• House points
• Spotted Cards
• Proud Post
• Headteacher and personal skill stickers
• Class pathway rewards
• Celebration assembly certificates