Leadership Team Email on PBIS Roll-out
January 4, 2016
New School Families,
Welcome to 2016! We wanted to share some of the changes that you will be seeing in 2016 with regards to school climate and culture. These changes come after months of research, training, and planning, and we are excited to rollout our Positive Behavior Intervention and Support Plan (PBIS).
PBIS is a tool that schools use to build positive school culture and climate- as opposed to the more traditional and punitive approach. The focus is placed on positively reinforcing expected behaviors across all students in the school. Our PBIS roll out is meant to focus on school wide behaviors and areas, and teachers will follow up with classroom wide behaviors. Below is a (brief) breakdown of NSSF’s PBIS system.
Our PBIS team has created tangible examples of how students (and adults) can live out our community agreements within the school day. Attached you will find a breakdown of our different School-Wide expected behaviors and different environments. Students have begun this week talking about expected behaviors founded in our community agreements. Every week we will have a different focus of an expected behavior that kids will learn and practice in a particular environment.
When a child is displaying the focus behavior they will receive a “Community Card.” Any adult can give a child a community card if they see them displaying the expected behavior of the week. Attached you will find more information regarding community cards.
Extra Fun Fridays
We will also be implementing “extra fun Fridays” at the end of every Friday afternoon- from 2:45-3:15pm with school-wide prime choice activities (face painting, chalk drawing in front of the building, magna tiles, etc). We would LOVE to have a “special guest” parent run station every week. If you are interested in helping to organize this please let Ms. Christina know. Read more about extra fun Fridays in the attachment below.
Just as students are learning and practicing expected behaviors, they are also learning about what they can expect to see happen when they are not upholding our community agreements. Attached you will find our consequence ladder that outlines minor and major infractions, steps the teacher or other adult will take, and how we will communicate with parents. Our consequence ladder is to provide clarity, consistency and transparency across the school.
Thanks!
PBIS Team (Shernice, Christina, Nicola and Shannon)