Celebrating Success at Dawn House School:

Dawn House has a strong history of rewarding progress made by students.  When students make a special effort or go the extra mile, it is important that this is recognised. At Dawn House, we reward students who make progress with their personal and social skills, academic skills, and work-based skills, all of which involve good communication.

Enrichment and Merit System:

We have developed a positive behaviour system that supports pupils to recognise and apply key attributes that link to the school behaviour policy: engage, develop, aspire and communicate.

The system was created from feedback with pupils and staff who wanted to highlight when pupils were showing kindness, and being in the right place and mindset to learn.

Alongside each child’s individual learning, SLT and OT support, we designed a system that whereby if the behaviours were shown, they would be highlighted at that moment by staff (in an appropriate way for each individual) and a merit given and recorded on a digital system called ePraise. These merits would then be added daily and recognition given to those in each class that had earned the most.

At the end of the week, the total would then by used to access different enrichment activities (as chosen with the pupils), each with a merit ‘cost’. The time allocated at the end of the week also focuses on developing social skills and independence/decision making as well as understanding of how to progress with positive behaviours and resilience.

Enrichment activities include:

• IT club
• Dance club
• Sports
• Craft club
• Film club
• Biking
• Swimming
• Gym