Wellbeing Initiatives
At St Mary Magdalene’s School we recognize that students learning is enhanced when they feel safe, happy and a sense of belonging to their school community.
We are committed to students’ wellbeing through a variety of whole school programs and preventative strategies.
Programs and Preventative Strategies
We are committed to student wellbeing through a variety of programs and preventative strategies that support us to build positive relationships between staff, students, and families:
5-point scale
The 5-point scale is a whole school strategy used to support students with regulation, develop consistent language between educators and students, promote social-emotional understanding and assist with smoother transitions between classrooms each year.
The 5-point scale is a concrete, systematic and non-judgmental way of teaching social and emotional skills to help children notice and functionally respond to their own and other’s social behaviour.
With their teacher’s guidance, students create their own individual scales and review them at allocated times. The review process of the 5-point scale is an important aspect, ensuring that it remains relevant to the student and continuing to work for them. Staff training is provided to ensure consistency across the school as well as family information sessions, strengthening the connection between school and home.
Buddies Program
At the beginning of each year, each class is buddied up with another class in the school. Buddies support children to develop connections across the school. Buddy classes meet approximately 3 times per term to engage in fun and exciting activities.
MindUp Curriculum
The MindUP Curriculum is implemented each year across all year levels R-6. It is a comprehensive, classroom tested, evidence-based curriculum that fosters social and emotional awareness, enhances psychological wellbeing, and promotes academic success. The students engage in learning experiences that improve student self-control and self-regulation skills, strengthen student’s resiliency and decision making, bolster students’ enthusiasm for learning, reduce peer to peer conflict, increase students’ academic success and develop students’ positive social skills such as empathy, compassion, patience, and generosity.
Positive Reinforcement Strategies
Positive reinforcement strategies are used to support and encourage children to demonstrate positive behavioural choices such as those highlighted in our School Expectations.
In Reception to Year 2 we focus on a strategy known as ‘Bucket Fillers’. It is a concept that encourages positive behaviour as children see how very easy and rewarding it is to express kindness, love, and appreciation, on a daily basis. Children discover that when they fill someone’s bucket, they are also filling their own. Bucket filling is the moment-by-moment choice to be kind and caring.
Restorative Practice
We implement a whole school teaching and learning approach named Restorative Practice that is based on values including empathy, respect, honesty, and accountability. At the heart of Restorative Practice is a focus on repairing and strengthening relationships and restoring harmony in classrooms and across the whole school community.
Peaceful Kids
Peaceful Kids is a Mindfulness, Positive, and Psychology-based program to lessen anxiety and worries and increase resilience in children. The developmentally appropriate program aims to:
- Lessens symptoms of anxiety and worry
- Empowers children to self-calm
- Builds emotional resilience and intelligence
- Teaches life-long skills to manage and prevent build-up of stress
- Reminds children they are not alone with their suffering of anxiety.
How we practice Gratitude at St Mary Magdalene's School
Gratitude is an important part of our school day at St Mary Magdalene’s
Each morning our Berry Street Circle includes ‘What Went Well’. This is a chance for students to name a positive moment from their day or week, and to hear the good things happening for others too. By looking for small moments of gratitude—including the love and support of family—children learn to focus on the positive, which supports their mental health and helps with emotional regulation.
Starting the day with gratitude creates a positive outlook, helps calm big feelings, and gives students the best chance for a happy and successful day.
Families can support this by encouraging gratitude at home—such as sharing good moments at dinner or bedtime—so that children learn to carry thankfulness into all parts of their lives.
To keep the gratitude going at home, we will be handing out some special gratitude questions at the end of the school day. These are simple questions that our parents and carers can ask us, like “what made you smile today?” or “who was kind to you?“.
We think that this will be a fun and easy way for families to talk about the good parts of our day, and to help us remember that there is always something to be grateful for.
Counselling
We value the importance of supporting children’s social and emotional needs.
Our school counsellor Shannon O’Toole is available to our students across the school week on Mondays, and Thursdays.
Shannon supports our children in a variety of ways, working one on one, in small groups, whole classes and year level cohorts. She can assist children in developing friendship skills, resilience, positive self-esteem, and body image, as well as many other skills relevant to school age children.
Students from Reception to year 2 require parent/guardian permission to visit Shannon, while students from year 3 to year 6 can self-refer. Support is also available to families on a need’s basis.
For more information about our School Counsellor please call our Front Office on 08 8287 7900 or email info@smm.catholic.edu.au
Book a tour of our school
We invite you to book a personal tour of our school grounds, with our Head of School. A tour is a great way to inspect our facilities, meet our dedicated staff and ensure we are the right fit for you and your family.
Book a Tour