Student Wellbeing

Welcome back to another school year! I hope you all had a restful holiday and have started to get back into the school routine. We are looking forward to another year of growth and fun!

We had many great accomplishments last year in the Wellbeing Space at St Joe's and we are looking forward to another great year, full of fun and learning for our students! Another aspect we would love to see more of this year is, Parent Engagement! Parent Engagement with students' learning is so essential to a student's growth and development and the big plus is that we love bringing families along with that journey as well!

Start of the school year

The start of the school year is crucial in classrooms. Students must establish relationships with their teachers and peers and establish classroom routines and expectations. At St Joseph's, we implement a Positive Behaviour Approach, fostering the values of Respect, Responsibility, and Resilience. Here is our school Behaviour Matrix that outlines our expectations at St Joseph's. 

Students receive 'Gotcha' tokens for displaying these behaviours. Each class fills a container in their classroom. The teacher picks out one Gotcha token at the end of the week for an individual award. As a school, we then pour our Gotcha tokens into a big container and once that is filled we can receive a whole school reward. At Assembly, two students are picked out to receive a yummy prize! To find out more about our PBL approach, check out our PBL Parent Handbook:

Establishing Classroom Expectations

During our Wellbeing Week the Grade 3 students created some posters for their classroom about being Respectful, Responsible and Resilient.

Another FANTASTIC display created was by the Grade 1/2 students. They created posters about how they can be a TEAM!

Zones of Regulation

The Foundation students focused their Wellbeing Week on learning about the Zones of Regulation. The Zones of Regulation has 4 Zones: Blue, Green, Yellow and Red.

The Blue Zone is when we are feeling sad, tired or upset.

The Green Zone is when we feel happy, focused and ready to learn.

The Yellow Zone is when we are feeling silly, excited or annoyed.

The Red Zone is when we are feeling angry or frustrated.

The Foundation students enjoyed matching emotions with the Zones! Can you guess which Zone each of these photos represents?

The Foundation students learnt how it is ok to be in all the zones but the green zone makes us feel the best. We talked about ways we could get back to the green zone and how we could take breaks to calm our bodies.

Friendship Groups

It was so wonderful to have Friendship Groups back again last week! We absolutely cherish having our Friendship Group time!!! For our first session, we played lots of team-building skills and welcomed our new members to our groups! 

Friendship Groups are multi-leveled groups that the students belong to. We meet once a fortnight and do Wellbeing activities together. We are looking forward to another amazing year of fun and support!

Here are some photos of Red House!

Donation

Last year you may remember seeing in the newsletter that we were fortunate enough to receive a Wellbeing Donation of $2500! We were so grateful to have received this donation. This money went to buying the students resources for playtime and lunchtime clubs! We are excited for the students to start seeing the new equipment and games on the playground over the next few weeks!

Mental Health in Primary Schools

This year, I am looking forward to working closely alongside Katie Vranken in her new Mental Health in Primary Schools role. Next month, myself, Katie and Nick will be attending some training on how we can implement new and different Wellbeing curricula, knowledge and skills within our school.

Looking forward to another amazing year! If you ever have any ideas or queries, please feel free to email me rbeveridge@sjyarrajunction.catholic.edu.au