Allandale School Arts Festival 

Thank you to all the amazing Allandale School staff for supporting our children to express their talents through the arts.  Thank you to the support staff for supporting of staff and children in getting our arts festival organised.  

Thank you to our AWESOME children who shared their amazing talents from singing, dancing, performing arts, photography and visual arts.  

Lastly thank you to all our families and community for coming and celebrating in our children's learning.    

RESILIENCE

There has been a lot of talk about our at risk children not having or demonstrating  'resilience' but the more I think about it the more I see how much resilience they have and show us everyday. 

The definition of resilience is...

1 the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.

"the often remarkable resilience of so many British institutions"

2. the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity.

"nylon is excellent in wearability, abrasion resistance and resilience"

synonyms:

flexibility, pliability, suppleness, plasticity, elasticity

Resilience is an important skill that in today's world our children aren't facing day to day. We, as a society tend to wrap our children in cotton wool to protect them from so much and this has allowed some of our children to grow up with no adversity therefore not developing their skills to be resilient. I've been thinking about how I grow up 1 of 6, we had a girls bedroom and a boys bedroom 3 in each. We quickly learnt how to share and get long with each other. We rode bikes without helmets, we climbed, jumped and made our own fun everyday. If we wanted something we would work together as a family to get it, nothing was instant. 

Our at risk children have much adversity in their day to day lives and in my humble professional opinion I believe we have some of the most resilient children I know. These chn face stresses and adult problems but manage to find their feet everyday  and come to school. Many of them with a smile of their gorgeous faces, with a good morning or a morena. I believe our at risk children don't need to be taught resilience as they teach me about resilience everyday. 
I believe what they need is teachers that recognise and can fill their emotional tanks up. 

Check In Check Out

As part of our PB4L tier 2 journey at Allandale School we have trialed the implementation of a new behaviour support programme h, Check In and Check Out. This programme has been researched and runs along the lines of CR & RP.  Developing relationships were chn are valued, listened to and respected provides opportunities for all chn to succeed. 

I have run this programme with 9 chn from senior school to junior school. All 9 chn are boys demonstrating challenging behaviours in the classroom and outside. CICO is a targeted intervention that looks at con-constructing daily individual behavioural goals. Every morning the chn and I identify the amount of points their would like to achieve for the day. We talk about their families and how things are going and what they find tricky at school. After lunch we get together again and review how they day has gone. Celebrating the successes and problem solving the difficulties that have been evident.

Teachers have identified...  

• Students look forward to seeing facilitator teacher everyday
• Students understand the process 
• Students seem to be calmer and positive throughout the day
• Students learning is more focused
• Students have two adults to celebrate their successes with
• Families and teachers all get to share positive comments about a child.
• Families share the successes the children are having at home too
• A decrease is negative behaviours.
• Classroom environments are positive focused.