Wellbeing

WELLBEING AT WEMBLEY

Welcome back to Term 2 at Wembley! We hope you all managed to recharge over the school holidays. 

This term is a slightly shorter one with 9 weeks of learning and some great activities planned. 

With the start of term and students enjoying time away from the learning environment, it is possible that for some children a few anxieties may creep back in which could make the morning routine and getting through the gate each day a little more challenging. We have previously shared strategies to support your child with school drop off including:

• meeting a friend on the way in to school
• having a goodbye routine such as a 3, 2, 1 strategy (e.g. 3 hugs, 2 high fives, 1 special handshake) 
• arranging with your child's teacher for them to do some 'jobs' in the classroom to help give them a purpose to be in the classroom 
• identifying a motivator to increase your child's excitement about school such as  Breakfast Club

If your child is finding drop off challenging in the mornings, you can use the strategies and tips below to help your child navigate their emotions:

1. Remind them that all feelings are okay - validation is key
2. Help them label their emotions
3. Thoughts affect feelings, which affect actions
4. Don’t try to “fix” their feelings
5. Help them identify strategies to move from negative feelings to positive ones
6. Slow down the pace
7. Feelings don’t last forever
8. Show your own feelings
9. Help kids recognise their body triggers
10. Show kindness

The wellbeing team are currently working through some processes and strategies that can be used to support children and their families with drop offs. We will reach out to families to offer these supports. We also want to encourage any families who are finding morning drop off challenging to reach out to their classroom teacher so we can offer you these supports.

SWPBS - SCHOOL WIDE POSITIVE BEHAVIOUR SUPPORT

This week we launched a number of exciting things in SWPBS. 

Stamps

All staff and Peer Mediators have been provided with a set of four different coloured stamps. Each stamp’s colour matches one of our school values. When a student is seen displaying one of our school values, they will be given the matching stamp in order to acknowledge and reinforce this behaviour. Each time students get a stamp they will also receive 5 house points. Students can be acknowledged for displaying behaviours in all school settings including, the classroom, yard, assembly or while attending a school event such as camp or an excursion.

Fortnightly Behaviour Focus

Each fortnight across the school, we will be selecting a particular behaviour that we will focus on. These behaviours will all link to the same value throughout a term. In Term 2, the value we are focusing on is ‘Resilience’. You can see a list below of the behaviours we will focus on each fortnight in Term 2.  Students will be explicitly taught these behaviours in class so that they understand what they are, why they are important and how they can use these behaviours. 

Nominations

Every class will have a nomination box with a set of nomination sheets. Students, staff and all community members can nominate a student or staff member they see displaying the focus behaviour and put their nomination in the box. There will also be a nomination box at the front office which families are welcome to use if they wish to add their own nominations if they observe a student or staff member displaying our fortnightly focus behaviour.

At the end of each fortnight, Junior School Councillors will collect all the nominations from their year level to give to the Wellbeing Team. A nomination from each year level will be selected to be shared at assembly. These nominated students will then have their photo and nomination added to a celebration display in the school.

FORTNIGHTLY BEHAVIOUR FOCUS - FOCUSING ON THE POSITIVE

This week we have introduced our first behaviour focus: 'Focusing on the Positive'. When you focus on the positive you look for the good in each situation, even when things are not going the way you want. Another word for focusing on the positive is being optimistic. 

Students have been learning what 'Focusing on the Positive' means and how they can use this skill to help them. Students and all Wembley staff, including classroom teachers, education support staff, specialists, members of leadership and our office staff will be watching to see if students are displaying this behaviour of 'Focusing on the Positive' and recording a nomination for any students who they see doing this well. 

Watch the video below where some of our students explain what 'Focusing on the Positive' means to them and why it is important to do. 

BREAKFAST CLUB

Last term we let you know that we had been lucky enough to get a $2000 grant that Foodbank had secured on our behalf to spend on resources from the Good Guys. We have now ordered our new equipment and are very excited to say that it will be delivered very soon to school. We have ordered a fridge, which will be a huge benefit to the team, as we will be able to store more resources in there, making life much easier. We have also ordered some new toasters, sandwich toasters, a blender and a juicer. We are hoping that with some of the new equipment we will be able to have some special additions to the menu - like orange juice and smoothies as treats scattered throughout the term. As ever, we are so thankful to Foodbank - they are an amazing resource for us and Breakfast Club continues to thrive with their support. 

WELLBEING DOGS

We welcomed Ginny back onsite last week and she was super excited to see everyone!

River will be taking a little break from school whilst she navigates some health issues. We are sending River lots of love and can't wait to have her back soon. 

We will continue to remind all students of the three key rules to remember, which are:  

DISABILITY INCLUSION REFORM

If you have been keeping up to date with the school newsletters you will be aware that we have been updating you on the Disability Inclusion Profile roll out. Read more on the DE website: https://www.education.vic.gov.au/school/teachers/learningneeds/Pages/disability-inclusion.aspx 

Following the practise DIP that we had before the school holidays, the team now feel confident that we can begin the real process with some students in school. This term we will be focussing on one student to ensure that we have all pieces of evidence needed in place. This means that for any other students that we will be taking through the DIP process this year, we can continue gathering the relevant evidence which will ensure we have the minimum required 10 weeks of evidence. 

As a school we have made the decision to try and ensure that we have executive staff that are skilled up in a variety of areas such as knowledge of Autism, Dyslexia and challenging behaviours. We have a number of the executive leadership team enrolled in professional development this term across a variety of courses. This training will enable reports with recommendations to be written about individuals in school.  We will then be able to use these recommendations as evidence of the adjustments being made in school. This is am exciting opportunity for our school and will add to the strengths that we already have within the wellbeing sector. 

As a reminder if you have any updated reports that have been conducted outside of school by Allied Health Professionals (e.g. Speech Pathologists), please ensure these are passed onto school so that we can ensure we are making all relevant adjustments.