St Michael's Primary School Ashburton

Wellbeing News 

Miss Samantha Isaacson 

Positive Behaviour for Learning -PBL 

St Michael’s is a PBL school. PBL is a whole-school approach to creating a positive, safe and supportive school climate in which all students can learn and develop. All members of our school work together to teach and support behaviour expectations at our school. We implement PBL to improve the behaviour of all students in all school settings. 

 

PBL schools create and teachers deliver instruction using a set of behaviour expectations and positively acknowledge students for those behaviours. All school personnel are responsible for knowing the behaviour expectations and providing consistent positive feedback to students. 

 

Our Expectations- SMASH 

 

Our behaviour expectations are:

Stay Safe

Make a Difference

Act Responsibly 

Show Respect 

Help Others 

 

Our Matrix

Our behaviour matrix lists the specific behaviours under each expectation across different settings that we expect students to display. Each term we will be explicitly teaching these behaviours. This term we are focusing on ‘Show Respect’. The settings in our school are Classroom Spaces, Transition Spaces, Outdoor Spaces, Community Spaces and Toilets. 

 

So far our St Michaels community has focused on:

  • Show Respect in classroom spaces by showing whole-body listening.
  • Show Respect in all spaces by speaking appropriately to others.
  • Show Respect in all spaces by using your manners.

 Over the next couple of weeks we will be focusing on:

  • Show Respect in all spaces by keeping to the left when passing pedestrians.
  • Show Respect in classroom spaces by raising your hand and waiting patiently.

 

Positive Acknowledgement 

When a student displays these expectations anywhere in the school they are positively acknowledged. This can be in the form of a verbal acknowledgement or with a marble using the language of the Matrix of Expected Behaviour. Once the class fills the marble jar the whole class celebrates together. This celebration is determined by each individual class. Specialist classes will be using SMASH tickets that students will be able to bring home after adding a marble to their classes' marble jar. 

 

 

Rights, Resilience, Respectful Relationships -RRRR

What is 'Respectful Relationships'?

In the family violence prevention space, the term ‘Respectful Relationships’ is the building and promotion of gender equity in relationships and the challenging of gender stereotypes.

 

St. Michael’s is a Lead Respectful Relationships School, in which we aim to continue to create a culture of respect, building students’ personal resilience and supporting gender equality. 

 

What does the teaching of Respectful Relationships look like in my child’s classroom?

Respectful Relationships falls within the ‘Health and Physical Education and Personal and Social Capabilities Curriculum’. The Respectful Relationships program provides 8 topics to support the above. St Michaels has mapped out the topics to ensure one topic is taught per term (2 in prep) to ensure that all topics are covered as part of a two year cycle. They include: 

1-Emotional Literacy

2-Personal Strengths

3-Positive Coping 

4-Problem-Solving

5-Stress Management

6-Help-seeking

7-Gender and Identity

8-Positive Gender Relationships 

 

All activities in the program contribute to the building of positive peer relationships and are age appropriate. 

Student Representative Council-(SRC) Student Voice 

Our SRC members met with Annie and myself on Monday afternoon for our first meeting. It was wonderful meeting all our SRC members for Semester 1, 2023. For our first meeting, students discussed what being an SRC member looks like. Here are some responses the students came up with: 

  • Help others by looking after and being aware of each other
  • Being inclusive of everyone 
  • Acting responsibly by using appropriate language
  • Being a good role model to all students by using our SMASH expectations
  • Showing whole-body listening 
  • Being kind to everyone every day
  • To not exclude anyone 
  • Ask someone to play if they are on the friendship seat or alone
  • Asking “are you okay?” 
  • If someone falls over to help them
  • Using your manners and saying sorry when needed
  • Kindly tell students or get help from a teacher if you see someone being unsafe

Next week SRC Students will be asking their classes about what they would like to see at St Michael's. The SRC students will then report back to the SRC Team.