Assistant Principals' Report
Hello everyone and welcome to our newsletter article,
School-wide Positive Behaviour Support
Heidelberg Primary School has been a School-wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS) school since 2022.
SWPBS is designed to help schools create positive, safe and fair settings where students and teachers can thrive. It focuses on teaching and encouraging positive behaviour, supporting all students, and providing extra help to those who need it.
SWPBS is a globally recognised, evidence-based approach that improves behaviour, wellbeing, and learning for children and young people. SWPBS allows teachers and students to spend more time building positive relationships and focusing on learning.
It benefits everyone by:
- increasing respectful and positive behaviour
- allowing more time for focused learning in the classroom
- enhancing social and emotional wellbeing
- strengthening positive and respectful relationships between students and staff
- creating safe, orderly, and supportive school environments
To complement the SWPBS approach, we ensure our school values of respect, responsibility, resilience and compassion are visible across our school and classrooms, demonstrated by staff and students and referred to regularly. Positive behaviours are recognised in many ways including praise, awarding Dojo points (a classroom-based reward system) or receiving Achievement of the Week or a Principal Award at school assemblies.
Year 6 students, Audrey, Lyla, Hunter, Cooper and Oliver from Room 4 shared their thoughts on the school value of responsibility.
Please see their ideas below:
What does responsibility mean to students and staff at Heidelberg Primary School?
Being responsible means understanding positive behaviours and making positive and helpful choices. It is understanding what positive and helpful actions are and then actually doing it!! Depending on how old you are it means doing it without always being asked or listening to teachers and following instructions. Responsibility is about yourself, but it is also about others.
Why do we value responsibility at Heidelberg Primary School?
We value and demonstrate responsibility because we want to get the best out of our learning, we want to achieve our personal best. We also know that the more we take and demonstrate responsibility the more responsible we will become. It benefits our learning and wellbeing and the learning and wellbeing of others. We care about our community. We also want to be good role models for our peers and younger students. Being responsible makes you feel encouraged, gives you a positive energy, is rewarding and makes you feel proud of your actions.
How do students and staff demonstrate responsibility at Heidelberg Primary School?
- Being honest, trustworthy and truthful
- Taking responsibility for actions that are not following our school values, acknowledging what you did, what a more positive choice would have been and then thinking of actions to ‘make it right’
- Active participation and learning, being on task and aiming for personal best
- Making positive, responsible choices without always being asked or needing recognition or reward
- Taking care of yourself, others, your belongings and the environment
Thank you to Audrey, Lyla, Hunter, Cooper and Oliver for their contributions. It is pleasing to see our Year 6 students have such a strong understanding of what responsibility means, why it is important and how it improves learning and wellbeing across our school. In future newsletters, we will put a spotlight on our other school values.
Have a lovely weekend and week ahead.
Helen Thomas & Monique Rankin
Assistant Principals
Heidelberg Primary School