Clear expectations for behaviour, leadership from fellow students and a behaviour ‘hall of fame’ are set to help students at St Finbar’s Catholic Primary School Sans Souci learn better than ever in 2019.
St Finbar’s School-Wide Positive Behaviour for Learning (SWPBL) program has been encouraging students to follow four key expectations since its introduction at the school. When children are seen displaying behaviour clearly in line with one of the key expectations, they receive a token which they can collect and redeem for rewards. This year, children will be incentivised further.
“We’re refining all of our rules and expectations,” said Principal Susan Bonello, “so they’re more easily remembered, and therefore more easily followed.”
“We’ve also established a ‘Hall of Fame’ so students who get to a certain number of reward tokens will have their photos displayed and feel a sense of pride.”
In addition to individual recognition for making good behaviour choices, we have established a collective system whereby the whole school benefits with a reward like a free choice afternoon from achieving a community total. This added incentive motivates students to encourage others to make good choices.
Children enjoyed their first schoolwide reward last term as a prize for earning 200 tokens as a student body, and were granted one session of free time for their efforts.
School Captain Emma Djundja and SWPBL Leader Jessica Hanna spent their reward time drawing and playing Uno and soccer with friends.
Each week they encourage other students, including new kindergartens, on how to follow a different aspect of the school expectations, which they feel offers a good incentive for younger students to follow them.
“We give them their posters, and we encourage them to follow those focuses and do the right thing,” Jessica said. “Students trust the other students and their friends. [Kindergarten, especially] really listen, they want to be good.”
“We can say ‘I’ll be good, and then we can all be good together’,” added Emma.