Student Wellbeing for Engaging Literate Learners

Positive Behaviour for Learning Lessons

PBL supports those with challenging behaviour and believes that there is a reason behind this behaviour and all people have the right to be treated with dignity and respect, have lives of quality, and receive effective services. Dignity and respect do not need to be earned but are freely given because of the humanity of each person. GGSS is a PBL school and we implement these ideals to educate and instruct our learners to make better choices when faced with a behaviour situation/challenge.

What does PBL look like to start off this term?

Our teachers and students are focussing on reviewing the behaviour matrix and discussing behaviour goals for this term and this forms part of the weekly focus:

T3 - Week 1: All areas, all expectations and review the matrix.

Our weekly focus is on the term calendar & we will post it on Dojo & Facebook each week.

Setting up rewards and goals are a big part of our PBL mindset at GGSS. Looking at the behaviours and deciding the appropriate response as a class, doesn't only bring cohesion but it can give rise to accountability for groups and individual students. Bee tokens play an important part of this cycle. Our bee tokens are categorised into three groups: one individual bee colour coded to each teacher; a green 2 bee, used by specialists and a blue super bee, which is ten bees in one. Bees are tallied and collected each week. Students then place this tally in a bee rewards book. Once a certain amount is reached, for example 100 bees, a reward is given at assembly. The assembly awards are ribbons for 100 - 300, 600 - 900, 1100 - 1400 and badges for 500, 1000 and 1500 bees. The total reward at the end of the year for the students who attain the most amount of bees, is a day out with Mrs H-B (which usually entails a movie and maybe popcorn)!

Action for Happiness - Jump back July

Wellbeing & Friendship

We are trialing some new programs at the school this term.

Switch 4 School

This program will be trialled in 1 class of each cohort this term. The following classes will participate;

Prep A, 1/2C, 3/4C & 5/6B

Social and emotional learning, and the health and wellbeing of our students is one of our key priorities.  With this in mind, we have invited the Switch4Schools team to come and talk to us about an innovative app they’ve developed to capture and track data on students’ emotional state to assess if this is a program that will work in our school. 

The Switch4Schools program facilitates data collection for students to record their level of energy and emotional state, along with recommending appropriate activities. The activities move students through crucial steps in building emotional intelligence.  The app is aligned with our SWELL framework mental health and well-being program, so reinforces and helps students to develop crucial life skills. De-identified student data is aggregated into a dashboard to help inform administrators on the emotional state of students across the school and provide opportunities to improve both learning and mental health outcomes. 

UR Strong

URSTRONG’s whole-school friendship strategy has improved the social climate in schools around the world, connecting over a million kids, parents, and teachers with a common language of friendship. We are proud to be a URSTRONG School and are committed to empowering your children with friendship skills.

You are invited to take advantage of a FREE Parent Membership to access hundreds of resources – including an 8 session video series. This will allow you to learn the same language & strategies being taught in the classroom through the Friendology 101 curriculum. We hope that, as a URSTRONG Family, you will reinforce the important messages of empowerment, self-compassion, & kindness at home.

As a next step, we would recommend:

• Click here to view an overview of URSTRONG.
• Activate your FREE Parent Membership and explore all the resources available to your family.
• Explore the hundreds of resources available to you!

We believe that empowering our students with these skills will create a culture of kindness at our school and we hope that, together, we can support your children to have healthy, feel-good friendships.

Founder, Dana Kerford, was interviewed in 2018 on the topic of bullying for the Sydney Morning Herald. Here is the interview with journalist and author, Kasey Edwards:

Australian schools have the dubious honour of having one of the highest reported rates of bullying in the world. By some estimates, one in four students experience regular bullying.

Governments have implemented anti-bullying programs, schools write policies, and parents are vigilant, yet we appear unable to solve the bullying problem.

“Bullying” has taken on a life of its own.

Perhaps it’s time for a re-think.

According to Canadian friendship skills expert and founder of URSTRONG Dana Kerford, Australia’s approach to bullying is wrong. For starters, we need to lose the term “bullying”.

“The word ‘bullying’ is so misused and misunderstood, even among parents and teachers. The word has taken on a life of its own, and it’s confusing for children,” says Kerford who is currently on an extended stay in Australia, working with teachers, parents and students.

For behaviour to be “bullying” it must be intentional, repetitive and potentially harmful. Accidently hurting someone is not bullying. Not liking your friend’s new haircut is not bullying. Having a disagreement, or not wanting to play with someone aren’t bullying. But this level of nuance can be difficult for children to understand.

To help kids identify bullying, Kerford suggests calling it “mean-on-purpose behaviour”. Anyone can understand what that means and can easily spot it.

The other problem with the term “bullying” is that it’s stigmatising.

“I absolutely do not believe that a little kid who’s learning these skills should be labelled a ‘bully’. They just haven’t learned to manage those really big feelings and emotions that they have inside in a healthy way yet.”

Kerford says that she’s seeing a reactionary and punitive response to bullying in Australia, such as tougher consequences for bullies and “say no to bullying” days.

“Having somebody come into a school and tell the story about how they’ve been bullied in their lives, and how they rose above it is inspirational, but that doesn’t give children anything they can use,” says Kerford.

“Instead we should focus on teaching kids practical skills-based strategies for how to manage and stand up to mean-on-purpose behaviour.”

Kerford says when kids start standing up to such behaviour they are not only learning to treat themselves with respect but they also deter the kids who are being mean-on-purpose from doing it again.

“Self-governance starts to happen in schools when children can effectively resolve their own conflicts, make good choices around who they’re playing with, and stand up to mean-on-purpose behaviour. We get this culture of harmony and kindness and respect and teachers can have their lunches and recesses back”.

The early signs of this new approach are promising. In 2012, Perth College implemented URSTRONG’s skills-based approach to empower students to deal with their own friendship issues. The school has subsequently seen improvement in the resilience in the students. Staff are also reporting that they now spend less time dealing with conflicts between students as the girls deal with conflict themselves.

“The girls consistently report low bullying scores across the year groups we assess (Year 3 to Year 12),” says Deb Perich, director of the program at Perth College.

“This approach works because the girls have a toolkit to use when they are faced with a challenge, whether it be normal conflict or a “mean on purpose” incident. They have simple skills to perform in these situations and they have practised their technique,” Perich says.

Although, not all teachers are comfortable with the approach, specifically the lesson that children should always stand up to mean-on-purpose behaviour. Because bullying is often a sign of low self-esteem and other trauma, some people believe that these kids should be treated with more understanding and compassion.

“Teachers have said to me that they try to teach the kids that things are a little harder for him [the kid who was mean-on-purpose], and that they should show some understanding. And I get very nervous when I hear that,” Kerford say.

“I think empathy obviously, is a great thing. We want to empathise. But there’s a tipping point when empathy becomes enabling.”

Excusing bullying behaviour because the kid is suffering, isn’t good for the child, since they can feel justified. And what happens when they grow into an adult, when such behaviours may land them in trouble with the law?

It’s also a terrible lesson for the victims. Do we want little girls thinking it’s okay for little boys to push them down the stairs because he has a rough home life and he’s feeling sad and angry? Add ten years and we’re potentially grooming young women to accept and excuse male violence or abuse as normal and justified.

Instead, we need to teach kids — all kids — that it’s never okay to be mean-on-purpose and that they should never have to tolerate it.

Of course, bullying is complicated, but given our poor performance in addressing the issues, Kerford’s approach, based on sound relationship principles, is worth trying.

We will be regularly updating our Class Dojo with resources and support for families to engage with also.  Class teachers are also going to be using the program in their classrooms to support students with strategies.  Please talk to your class teacher if you need further information.

PLAY IS THE WAY® is a social and emotional learning (SEL) methodology using:

• Physically interactive, games and activities that both require and develop personal and social capabilities as they are being played.
• Five guiding concepts that serve as a moral compass and help children to do what they believe is right and best to do. When embedded, these concepts prevent children from drowning in life and learning – hence, they are aptly called Life Raft concepts.
• An empowering self-reflective language that helps children to master their behaviour in preparation for a responsible life in a free and democratic society.
• Six key virtues we call our Pathway To Empathy virtues. When understood, practised and habituated, these virtues result in people of strong character and empathy. (See below)

It is a philosophy of behaviour education that fosters independent, self-managing, self-motivated, empathetic, life-long learners.

PLAY IS THE WAY® gives primary schools a way to develop, improve and embed the personal and social capabilities of students and is suitable for primary school children of all ages, abilities and ethnic backgrounds. No particular sporting or athletic ability is required to benefit from the process.

Each week at lunchtimes & in classes students engage with this program to support development of their social capabilities.