Novar Nursery
Promoting Positive Behaviour
Rationale
At Novar Nursery, we are committed to promoting the inclusion and wellbeing of all children, ensuring they have the best opportunities to reach their full potential. We align with Glasgow City Council’s “Promoting Positive Behaviour” policy, which reflects the city’s strong commitment to inclusion for all children and young people. This policy is underpinned by a range of key national and local frameworks, including Glasgow’s Additional Support for Learning Policy and Every Child Is Included and Supported (2016).
Aims
- To promote positive behaviour and relationships.
- To ensure all practitioners understand and support children's emotional development by applying principles of emotion regulation, de-escalation strategies, and restorative approaches. Practitioners will embed nurturing principles in their daily practice, recognising that all children are entitled to experience and express ‘big feelings’ in a safe and respectful environment.
Objectives
- Develop practitioners' understanding of children's emotional development, including typical behaviours linked to stages of development and how emotion regulation and emotional literacy develops and evolves over time.
- Staff use CPD opportunities to learn about emotion coaching, de-escalation techniques, and restorative approaches, ensuring consistent and confident responses to dysregulated behaviour.
- Embed nurturing principles in everyday practice, promoting warm, responsive, and respectful relationships between adults and children.
- Create emotionally safe learning environments, where children feel secure, valued, and able to express a full range of feelings without fear of judgement or exclusion.
- Support children to recognise, name, and manage their emotions, using strategies such as emotion charts, mindfulness, stories, and co-regulation with trusted adults.
- Promote a whole setting approach to positive behaviour, ensuring that behaviour expectations are developmentally appropriate, clearly communicated, and modelled by all staff.
- Use restorative practices to strengthen relationships after conflicts or incidents.
- Engage with families to build consistent approaches to behaviour and emotional regulation between home and setting.
- Monitor and reflect regularly, as a tool for learning and professional development.
- Ensure all practitioners uphold the belief that all children are entitled to ‘big feelings’, and that all behaviour is communication, that should be understood with empathy.
Success Criteria
Children are developing an awareness of themselves and others, developing positive relationships, they feel confident in expressing their ideas and feelings and have developed their own self-confidence. Practitioners use consistent, nurturing approaches to support children's emotions and behaviour. Children express their feelings, and positive relationships are evident across the setting.
Due for Review: July 2026