At Monash Special Developmental School we are committed to SWPBS as it helps create and maintain a positive, safe and supportive learning environment.
We are one of the first schools in Victoria to be awarded Gold Accreditation for our advanced implementation of SWPBS. We are incredibly proud of our students, staff and community for helping us reach this outstanding achievement.
SWPBS is a framework that has been developed from evidence and data and is proven to be successful in improving school culture, increasing academic performance, and reducing behaviours of concern.
SWPBS is an important element in increasing the wellbeing of our students. It is shown that when it is implemented well, students benefit from:
- improved social-emotional wellbeing
- positive and respectful relationships among students and staff
- a predictable learning environment with improved perceptions of safety and increased attendance
- increased respectful and positive behaviour
At Monash SDS we recognise the need to teach appropriate behaviours and do so through a unified approach with our students, staff and wider community. We created our behaviour matrix focusing on our three school wide expectations: Do Your Best, Help Others Succeed and Respect Your Environment. Here is our behaviour matrix:
This matrix helps to guide students and staff in demonstrating, teaching and rewarding appropriate and expected behaviours.
An essential feature in SWPBS is the acknowledgement of expected behaviours and at Monash SDS we do this through our One Stop Shop tickets. Students are awarded tickets for displaying expected behaviours and are able to spend their tickets at our One Stop Shop on a range of items. In addition to our ticket system we ensure that our students receive praise for any desired behaviours and approximation of these, ensuring that we are labelling the behaviour e.g. “Great work packing away the pencils”.
Our school leadership and SWPBS team use the data from our acknowledgement system (tickets), records of behaviour and academic performance to make adjustments to school operations to help reduce inappropriate behaviour.
Finally, we support all staff to use effective classroom practices. At Monash SDS we use the SWPBS tiered intervention framework, implementation and data collection strategies with other evidence based pedagogical approaches for students at each stage of learning. Structured Teaching, STAR/LINKS and SWPBS make up the triangulated pedagogy used at Monash SDS. Highly trained staff in each of these areas mentor staff in their application of these evidence based practices in the classroom. Implementing these evidence based practices to target academic, behaviour and social development has resulted in increases in academic and social achievement.
SWPBS utilises a tiered intervention framework as represented in the below visual. At Tier 1 there are universal systems in place for all settings and all students. At Tier 2 there are supports targeted to students at risk of developing challenging behaviours. At Tier 3 we provide intensive individualised support for students who display high risk behaviours of concern.
It is through the supports and practices within these tiers that we are able to ensure our students experience success, improving behavioural, wellbeing and academic outcomes.