‘We aim to strengthen teacher and parent management skills so as to reduce challenging behaviour in our children and to increase their social and self-control skills’.

Scoil Eoin Baiste actively uses the Incredible Years programme to encourage and promote positive pupil behaviour in our school.

This programme is designed to prevent and treat emotional and behavioural difficulties in children during the pre-school and primary school years. The attention rule is the basic principle behind this programme which simply stated is:

‘Children will work for attention from others, especially parents, whether it is positive (praise) or negative (criticism) in nature. If they do not receive positive attention, then they will strive for negative attention since that is better than none at all’.

The Incredible Years programme puts this positive approach into practice. In Scoil Eoin Baiste the Incredible Years programme uses three elements

• The Teacher Classroom Management Programme
• The Dina Programme
• The Parent Programme

Whilst each programme has been designed as a stand-alone intervention, taken together, they provide a cohesive and uniform strategy to address and eliminate behavioural difficulties in children.

The Teacher Classroom Management Programme:

This is a highely effective programme for teachers. It provides support to teachers to deal with social, emotional and behavioural problems in the classroom.

The Dina Programme;

The Dinosaur Social Skills and Problem Solving curriculum is a child training curriculum that strengthens children’s social, emotional and academic competencies such as understanding and communicating feelings, using effective problem solving strategies, managing anger, practicing friendship and conversational skills, as well as appropriate classroom behaviours. This year we are running the Dina school programme with Senior Infants (Classroom Dina).

The Classroom Dina Programme

The Classroom Dina Programme is delivered twice a week by teachers in the classroom. It consists of 20-30 minute circle time lessons, followed by small group practice activities and promotion of skills throughout the school day. The programme also includes letters to be sent home to parents with suggestions for home activities parents can do with their children. These activities reinforce the classroom learning and promote parent involvement. The classroom Dina programme helps teach children the important skills that are needed to make and keep friends, and also to work well in the classroom and school environment. The programme uses video clips, puppets, special activities, books, games and songs.

The Parent Programme:

This programme runs for approx 14 wks and helps teach parents strategies that reduce challenging behaviour in children and increase their social and self-control skills.