Guidelines for the use of the STAR approach for understanding and responding to children’s challenging behaviour
When a child is displaying behaviours which are difficult to manage within your setting you can use the STAR (settings/situations, triggers, actions, responses) approach to analyse what’s currently happening and then write a very clear behaviour change chart e.g. Who’s going to do what , when and how and how you are going to record progress.
The STAR analysis sheet is used to record behaviours within a specific context over a period of time. It is particularly important to use clear language to describe exactly what has been seen/heard e.g. ‘Daisy hit Freddie, took his tractor and threw it in the water tray.’ Is much clearer than, ‘Daisy was aggressive to Freddie.’
Once the STAR sheet has been completed, it is then important to analyse the information to look for patterns and, most importantly, to work out what might set the behaviours off (settings/triggers).
Using the information from the analysis, a behaviour change plan can be agreed with all the practitioners working with the child and recorded in clear language on a Behaviour Change Chart (a blank version and a completed example are included in the pack). A set of Agreed Outcomes should run alongside this to target specific skills that the child needs to learn to replace the unwanted behaviours e.g. turn-taking skills, waiting on request.
Remember that it is much easier to prevent behaviours by changing the settings/situations and triggers than to allow the behaviours to occur and respond to them. Also think very carefully about which rewards to use and how to use them (e.g. adult attention can be a very powerful reward).
When the plan is implemented it is important to work out a simple way to record progress as this can happen very gradually over time. (More often than not, when implementing behaviour change plans, behaviours get worse before they get better whilst children test the new boundaries)
When you’ve followed the advice above in a clear, consistent way and have implemented the actions and measured the success, you may find that things have improved considerably. If, however, when you’ve held a My Agreed Outcomes Review with parents/carers to evaluate the behaviour change plan and the child’s Outcomes, you still feel that you need advice from an outside agency, you can refer to the Specialist Early Years Teaching Service (SEN) using the appropriate referral form and attaching the required information (including the STAR chart and evaluated behaviour change plan).
CYC Specialist Early Years Teaching Service (SEN) Oct 2016