Wellbeing

Lindsey Delooze - Assistant Principal - Wellbeing and Disability Inclusion
Melanie Irons - Assistant Principal - Curriculum, Engagement and Wellbeing
Tom Penberthy - Mental Health and Wellbeing Coordinator

Week 7

We are powering through the term and getting closer to the next school holidays. We can't believe how quickly this term is progressing!

Over the last couple of weeks the SWPBS team and the executive leadership team have been working to develop a new behaviour framework for staff and students to follow. The wellbeing team are excited to be getting really close to sharing this as the next round of resources with the whole school, keep an eye out in the next newsletter where we hope to share this with our school community too. The wellbeing team will also be leading some further professional development with the whole school staff before the end of this term around good teaching practice to support with the school values and expectations.

National Bullying Prevention Week

Last week, August 14 - August 20, was National Bullying Prevention Week. During this week all students took part in lessons about what bullying is and how we all can help to create safe and inclusive environments that prevent bullying. We deliberately timed our fortnightly behaviour focus on 'Being an Upstander' to fall within this week to provide students with multiple opportunities to learn about how to stand up to bullying by speaking up or seeking help when they witness bullying, as well as how to refrain from demonstrating bullying behaviour. As part of these lessons students created posters to show the ways we can stand up to bullying, while in prep students created promises regarding the actions they would take to stand up to bullying.

School Wide Positive Behaviour Support

Current Whole School Behaviour Focus - Grow Who You Know

This week we have introduced our next behaviour focus: ‘Grow who you know’ as part of our focus on the value of inclusion. Grow who you know is about encouraging students to expand the people they mix with so they are creating more connections with more people throughout the school, from people in their classroom, to other students in other year levels and in the yard. By doing this students are given the opportunity to interact with people with different perspectives and interests to their own which can help to broaden their understanding of the world and see things from different perspectives which helps to reduce bias and fosters open-mindedness and empathy.

Students have been learning ways they can 'grow who they know' by playing or working with different people in the classroom and yard and showing an interest in other people by starting conversations with them and asking them questions.

Students and Wembley staff are watching for examples of students trying to 'grow who they know' and recording a nomination for these students. If your child comes home with an orange inclusion stamp, be sure to ask them what they did to earn this stamp.

Previous Whole School Behaviour Focus - Being an Upstander

Over the previous two weeks, students have been learning about the behaviour of 'being an upstander' as part of our value of inclusion. In every class, students engaged in lessons learning about being an upstander - a person who speaks up or acts to support another person or cause, particularly when someone is being attacked or bullied. They discussed how this was different to being a bystander - someone who sees another person being mistreated but doesn’t do anything to help them.

As part of these lessons, students looked at scenarios where they could practise being an upstander. They learnt about different ways they can safely be an upstander, from more overt actions like speaking up when they see someone being mistreated, to more subtle, but still effective actions like telling an adult if they see someone being mistreated or checking in on someone if they see them being mistreated. Classes also read books which looked at the impact of unkind behaviour and being a bystand when contrasted with the impact of being an upstander. Students were also given stamps and nominated for our Wembley Values Award when they were seen being upstanders. We are thrilled to share that there were over 230 nominations in the last fortnight for students modelling our value of inclusion and, in particular, our behaviour of 'being an upstander'. We are so proud to see so many Wembley students demonstrating these behaviours as we continue to learn together about how we can all be more inclusive.

Wembley Values Award Winners

Thank you to all the students who nominated their peers for our Wembley Values Award. It was wonderful to read about all the great ways students have been showing inclusion by being upstanders. Congratulations to each of the students, listed below, who won the Wembley Values Award last week.

Inclusion: Cooperating
Prep	Hunter D	For showing our value of Inclusion by ‘being an upstander’ when he saw someone was being too rough and he said, "Hey that's not nice, you're not keeping your hands, feet and objects to yourself!"
Year 1	Paige N-L	For showing our value of Inclusion by ‘being an upstander’ when she saw someone being unkind and she told them to stop, and to be kind to others.
Year 2	Finch T-B	For showing our value of Inclusion by ‘being an upstander’ when he always ensures that others are included in games and never left out or excluded and he always lets other people play with him.
Year 3	Tegan W	For showing our value of Inclusion by ‘being an upstander’ when another student was sad and no one was playing with them and Tegan went up to them and asked if they were ok. She then let that person play with her, which made them happy.
Year 4	Sylvie T	For showing our value of Inclusion by 'being an upstander’ when another student was alone and feeling excluded from others and Sylvie was an upstander by helping them out and including them.
Year 5	Max C	For showing our value of Inclusion by 'being an upstander’ when he showed courage to stand up to some people who were being unkind.
Year 6	Henry P	For showing our value of Inclusion by 'being an upstander’ when he stood up to a friend when Henry saw they were treating someone else unkindly.

Art Therapy

Arts Therapy has been continuing with Heshanthi Munasinha as she works withsmall groups of students. Over the last fortnight students have worked in small groups focusing on building their vocabulary in relation to describing their emotions. Some groups have explored how colours can be linked to different emotions and created a piece of artwork to represent different emotions. Other groups have engaged in a sensory exploration and thought about the emotions and feelings that different materials can make them feel and identifying particular materials that makes them feel calm and happy.

Student feedback continues to be very positive and we are all excited to have Heshanthi here again this week.

If you would like further information or have any other questions then please reach out to Tom Penberthy (thomas.penberthy@education.vic.gov.au)

Disability Inclusion

Lindsey, together with Vassie, and the school support team, will be facilitating the school's first Disability Inclusion Profile meeting next week. This is an exciting step in our Disability Inclusion journey as we navigate our way into the new funding structure.

Last week, Lindsey and Vassie attended a Melbourne Maribyrnong Principal Network's Disability Inclusion meeting. It was great to hear where other schools are at in the process, and to connect with some local schools to enhance best practice and share resources.

If you are a new family with a child starting Prep in 2024, we will have the first term to gather evidence if we feel that children require additional support in school. Adjustments need to be in place for at least 10 weeks before we can make an application and a child needs to fit one of the three pathways to consider an application. The pathways are: a diagnosed condition as specified by the Department of Education (this list does not include ADHD), a Vineland score of below 70, or a severe behavioural concern. If a child matches one of these three pathways then as a school we have to prove that we are putting in adjustments in a variety of domains (either at least 3 areas at an extensive level which means all the time, or 8 areas at a substantial level which means most of the time - see the domain table below).

If you have any questions about potential funding please reach out to Lindsey via an email to the school email address: Wembley.PS@Education.vic.gov.au