Wellbeing

PBL

At SFS, our PBL (Positive Behaviours for Learning) school wide expectations are:

Respect,  Responsibility and Kindness

We have a whole school social skills lesson where we explicitly teach an expected behaviour from our Behaviour Expectation matrix. The focus for this week has been on KINDNESS: INCLUDE OTHERS to tie in with our HARMONY week celebrations. 

Why is it important to teach this expected behaviour? 

• So that everyone feels that they belong
• To celebrate and embrace different cultures.
• To appreciate differences in others.
• To help us connect or build relationships with each other
• To work together to achieve learning
• To encourage kindness
• Teaches empathy.

Here are some of our lucky PBL raffle winners from last week who have been seen demonstrating our school expected behaviours. Congratulations to these children and keep up the amazing work!

Harmony Day and Harmony Week

A huge thank you to our beautiful children who participated so well in our Harmony Day celebrations on Tuesday. It was amazing to see the children dressed in orange or their lovely cultural clothes and so proudly sharing their cultural experiences. The children loved cooking pizza, lamingtons and lassi drinks and even more tasting them! The children also participated in a wellbeing and drama lesson on the theme of Harmony day, everyone belongs. The children also explored music from different cultures and learnt a dance from Italy, Australia or India. We finished the day with a beautiful prayer lead by the LS 3 senior students followed by a special presentation by Christine from “Cultural Explosion”. She took us on a journey from India to Italy then Australia as we all danced together. A huge thank you to all the teachers for the work on the day and especially the Specialist Team who prepared the day for the students. 

A big thank you also to all our wonderful SFS families who helped with the Harmony week home activity by decorating a family pot. They are now up on display in the foyer to the hall out the front of the music room. Please come and have a look at the Harmony week display that celebrates all our beautiful families and our multicultural backgrounds.

Peaceful Classrooms and Peaceful Kids

‘Peaceful Classrooms’ provides schools, organisations and wellbeing practitioners with engaging Mindfulness activities and meditations for children and teens. The program has been created to support all children in the classroom or groups to develop an ongoing Mindfulness practice, learn about Mindfulness and be able to embed this into their day to day lives.  

Simple, effective and proven exercises help students to stay calm, relax, focus and learn more effectively during the day.  Peaceful Classrooms help students to build their emotional resilience so they are better equipped to deal with the day to day stresses that life brings them.  

‘Peaceful Kids’ is a Mindfulness and Positive Psychology based program to lessen anxiety and stress and increase resilience in children from Prep to Year 12. The program gives children the skills, practice and support to utilise coping strategies that lessen the symptoms of anxiety and stress.  This program helps children to build their emotional resilience so they are better equipped to deal with the day to day stresses that life brings them. The program also involves parental involvement and commitment to supporting the strategies at home.  

Aims of the Program

• To minimise the symptoms of anxiety and stress
• To build emotional resilience 
• To empower children to self-manage their anxiety
• To teach children Mindfulness exercises they can use for life
• To build a reservoir of strength to enable children to cope with life more effectively
• To minimise anxiety symptoms occurring in the future
• For children to use a range of effective coping strategies
• Teaches children how to self-calm
• To develop emotional intelligence skills
• Teaches children life long skills to manage stress and prevent stress build up​
• Supports children so they know they are not alone with suffering from anxiety

I am inviting all parents to attend an online meeting on Wednesday 22nd April 2026 (Week 1 of Term 2) from 7pm and 8pm for those who would like to find out more information, particularly if you feel like these programs would be beneficial to your child and family. A form has been sent on Nforma. Please respond to the form if you are going to attend the online parent meeting on Wednesday 22nd April at 7pm.

Thanks

Child Safety standards

All Victorian schools are required to comply with the 11 Victorian Child Safe Standards. This is to ensure that the safety and wellbeing of children is promoted, child abuse is prevented, and allegations of child abuse are responded to properly and promptly.

At SFS, we have regular conversations about Child safety and ensure that we put the Child safety standards into practice.

Child safe standard 5 is Equity is upheld and diverse needs respected in policy and practice.

This means that staff at school know the students and understand their diverse backgrounds and we make adjustments to support the needs of all students.

Student Representative Council (SRC)

The SRC have been working hard over the last few weeks to action some positive changes at SFS. They have decided on the following actions for term 1.

They are writing and publishing some sandpit rules to be displayed outside near the sandpit to ensure that SFS students play safely and respectfully in the sandpit. 

They are also working on a slideshow and short videos demonstrating these expected behaviours.

The SRC have asked the teachers to introduce 1 minute of mindfulness when they come into the learning space before they start the morning and when they come in after the lunch breaks. They would like to practice Mindfulness such as taking deep belly breaths to calm themselves and get them ready for learning.

The SRC would like to present at each Friday assembly when the SFS news is shared.

I look forward to working with these students in term 2 and acting on more of their great ideas.

If you have any concern about your child’s mental health or wellbeing, please do not hesitate to contact me or make a time to speak with me. My working days are Monday to Wednesday and Friday. I will also be available on the Parent Teacher interview evening on Wednesday 1st April to speak. If you would like to make a time to chat, please email me or speak with me at school.

Rachel Lenko

Mental Health and Wellbeing Leader

rlenko@sfslynbrook.catholic.edu.au