We teach our learners Sunny Solutions. This enables all learners to be self managed, and to use proactive and effective strategies which will result in good choices and outcomes for learners.
What are our Sunny Solutions?
- They are effective strategies to develop problem solving skills for our learners.
- It is a five step whole school strategy that can be used in the classroom and in the playground and for solving problems, including bullying.
- We want to teach our learners the skills which will build their self esteem and empower them to take responsibility to practise these skills.
- We want to promote proactive strategies to prevent incidents escalating to bullying.
Use the Sunny Solutions
The order in which the first four following strategies are used can be interchanged
- Ignore
- Walk away
- Talk friendly
- Talk firmly
- Seek support
Ignore
- Pretend you didn’t hear it.
- Do not make eye contact.
- Maintain positive body posture (calm, confident).
- Think positive self esteem statements.
- Count to five in your head slowly.
- Take deep breaths.
Walk away
- Stand tall, head up high.
- Mouth closed
- Look confident.
- Do not use eye contact.
- Walk somewhere, preferably towards a teacher on playground duty or to the office.
Talk friendly
- Use calm voice.
- Maintain eye contact.
- Confident body language.
- Maintain relatively close body proximity.
- Use ‘I’ statements. I feel…..when you…because…..
Talk firmly
- As per Talk Friendly.
- Use an assertive voice, slightly raised.
- Tell them to stop it.
- Re-state your ‘I’ statement; e.g. I said. . .
- State the consequences of continued bullying.
Seek support
- Walk away and tell a staff member. If you cant find a teacher go to office.
Seeking support vs dobbing
- Learners need to know the difference between seeking support and dobbing.
- Seeking support is helping/getting yourself out of trouble.
- Dobbing is trying to get someone else into trouble.
Seeking support
- Learners should in most circumstances attempt to problem solve themselves first.
- If unsuccessful after using Sunny Solutions, learners should seek support.
Asking the teacher for support
Teacher dialogue should take the following format
- What ‘s happening?
- What do you want?
- Is what you are doing getting you what you want?
- What can you do to get what you want?
- What is your plan?
Seeking support straight away
- If the issue involves health or safety - learner is to seek support from a teacher immediately. Learners are not to try to problem solve these incidents themselves; e.g. Incidents of physical danger—Child running out of school grounds.