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Ascot Vale Special School 1 Tasma Street Ascot Vale 3032 ascot.vale.ss@edumail.vic.gov.au Office: 9370 8906/9370 8931 www.ascotvaless.vic.edu.au VCAL: 9370 8911

BULLETIN THURSDAY, 21 March 2019

Dear Ascot Vale Special School Community, School Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS) Ascot Vale SS began SWPBS in 2009. We were amongst the first schools to adopt this proactive approach to teaching all students agreed expected behaviours and pro-social skills rather than reacting to inappropriate behaviour. It provides a framework that ensures all members of the school community work together to provide the best outcomes for the students in our school. Over the years we have had staff turnover so we are re-booting this framework for teaching expected behaviour. We are also working with Anthony Sabbatino who is one of the SWPBS coaches for our region. Anthony delivered Professional Development to the whole staff at the beginning of the year. The primary prevention aspect of SWPBS consists of values, which are explicitly taught and modelled by school staff to encourage appropriate behaviour. Teaching behavioural expectations and acknowledging students for meeting them is a much more positive approach than waiting for misbehaviour to occur before responding. The concept of ‘Be Your Best’ will remain with the ‘Bee Rules’ we developed. Last year the students voted on a new bee image. We will be continuing to teach these skills to the students with visual supports and social stories. We need to revamp how this will look with our secondary students. To be your best we need to: 1 Be a Good Learner 2 Be a Good Friend 3. Be Safe Last week three members of staff attended the ‘Changing the Climate’ conference at the Melbourne Convention Centre. It was one of the best conferences I have attended. The key takeaways from the conference for me were: • SWPBS is a framework for a consistent, focused, long term environment within your school. • What can we put in our school environment to increase the likelihood for all students to succeed? • Understand the unique needs of our community and respond appropriately. • Develop strong relationships with your students- they are more likely to seek you out for help – sometimes we leave this to

chance but we need to create the opportunity to build this relationship. • Inconsistencies for students often leads to confusion – the need for common language and systems. • Behaviour is a form of communication for students. • Put in place routines and practices that are so clear, they allow students to be successful. Collecting the data on appropriate and inappropriate behaviours has always been difficult. We are not the only school who has this problem. Every school gave feedback at the conference that this is the most challenging aspect of SWPBS. COMPASS, which is the platform for communication and reports that we have adopted, will give us the opportunity to track this data more effectively. You will notice we have a special spot in the newsletter each week that has a SWPBS focus. I look forward to sharing more on SWPBS with you in the future.

School Name Change competition

Have you voted in the competition to choose the new name for our school? The first prize is a COLES MYER $50 voucher. Log into Seesaw and have a go.

Christine Monahan Assistant Principal

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Each week we will be highlighting one of

our school values, this week’s value is ……

RESPECT

We show consideration for others and ourselves,

understanding we are all individuals,

accepting diversity.

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In Multi-Media we have been having lots of fun developing our knowledge of apps that we have been using all term like ‘Stop motion’

and learning some new ones like ‘iMovie’ and ‘Toontastic’

The VCAL students have produced some excellent movie trailers about recycling and the effects of plastic in the sea. This week we also started using our new green screen background to film class 1 and class 2. We are going to use these films to begin creating some adverts about blowing bubbles rather than using balloons outside.

Well done everyone!

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Students from the Annexe are collecting plastic bottle tops/caps to donate to

make artificial limbs. Please wash and clean your bottle tops

and send them in for the Annexe. Thanks for helping!

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Every student, every day to be given the opportunity to be the best they can be.

25-29 March VCAL Queenscliff Camp

26 March Post Options School Expo

28 March Final Swimming Lesson

4 April Easter Raffle

5 April 2pm Last Day Term 1

Tuesday 23 April First Day Term 2

To help make our

Easter Raffle a great success, could parents please donate

Easter related goods to be made up

into hampers to be raffled off

on Thursday, 4th April.

Could donations please be made to the

office by Tuesday, 2nd April

Raffle tickets are $1.00 each

and have been distributed

There will be NO CAFE next Tuesday, 26 March and NO CANTEEN.

Wednesday, 27 March as the VCAL students will be away at camp.