WELCOME BACK

A very warm welcome back to what will be another busy term of learning and celebrations. Please check the fridge calendar that was sent home last week as well as your child’s class communication page for events.

This year we have embarked on a review of our Behaviour Education approach. Play is The Way is an integral part of our approach to supporting our learners to build self-regulation, social -management and resilience through a games based approach and with targeted staff questioning linked with our values. We were very fortunate to have the founder of this approach visit to run PD at our recent Student Free Day.

Wilson McCaskill first came to train staff at HEPS back in 2008 and the impact on our school is still strongly evident today. Wilson reminded us of the following important understandings in supporting our learners to build values and dispositions that will support them to make strong choices and to do the right thing.

• Social and behaviour learning is the role of all in the community – including peers helping peers
• If learning is always easy, we are not learning
• Children need to be provided with stretch and challenge to progress and build persistence and resilience
• Acknowledging children who use our values and do the right thing should aim to encourage children to continue to do the right thing – this should be specific and use the word because eg. ‘Well done John for using your persistence, that maths learning was hard but you completed it because you didn’t give up even though you were feeling frustrated.’ 
• We need to help children to understand they come to school to learn what they don’t know, NOT show what they do know

We continue to actively teach our school values, and have added 3 overarching high behaviour expectations that encompass our values, that will support our children into their futures.