Room 7 - Me, We, Us

Nau mai, Haere Mai

It is wonderful to be back, and we welcome with open arms our Room 7 class of 2022: Alex, Flynn, Ford, Kai and Logan. We have an amazing group of students, each one brings a different strength to the table and together we look forward to a year of personal growth, success and most of all, fun. Our mantra: having fun every day, every week, every term, makes for a happy class and a happy class makes for happy students who want to learn and to be the best version of themselves.

Our first week back has been one of settling in, exchanging stories of our summer break, revisiting our Zones of Regulation and enjoying strawberry and chocolate milkshakes (the highlight of the week.)

In 2021, Pitau-Allenvale began a school-wide journey when we signed up for the Positive Behaviour for Learning (PB4L) programme. This looks at behaviour and learning from a whole-of-school approach as well as an individual student perspective. It’s not about changing students but about making the environment, systems and day to day practice the best they can be in order to support our students to make positive choices about their learning and behaviour.

We started our PB4L journey last year and from day one this year we have continued to build on this foundation. An important part of PB4L is Acknowledging Expected Behaviour i.e.: acknowledging behaviour we want to encourage, and in Room 7 our 'Colourful emotions' reference is the basis for this.

We have begun this year continuing with the Shared Reading story of ‘The Colour Monster’. This is a story about a Monster who is all mixed up and needs help to determine his feelings and sort them into various colours. We talk about our feelings within in these various colours, how to recognise when we are feeling this way and what we can do to make ourselves feel better - breathing, music, sandpit, garden etc. During the school day, if one of our students’ voices, through either their mode of communication and/or body language, that they are red, blue, yellow or orange we acknowledge them and their feelings, endeavour to find out why, how we can help support them through it. Whether a student voices that they are red-angry, blue-sad, purple-scared, pink-love, green-calm or yellow-happy, we acknowledge them all. Acknowledging Positive Behaviour is at our forefront. It is a transferable skill. The skills our students learn and use in class they can use at home.

PB4L recognises that when we work together for a common goal it can be very powerful (Me, We, Us). Last week, after revisiting our 'Colourful emotions' and the book, students individually created a piece of the Colour Monster, (Me). After colouring the piece they worked as a team to put the Colour Monster back together (We). Over the next few weeks we will look to create coloured circles using different media, much like the picture above. Then post it on our class display board in the main building for other students and the community to view (Us).

Me, We, Us.  

We live in a challenging world that is changing daily. We all strive to do our utmost best for our students, to give them the skills they need to cope, to succeed and to smile often. By using the 'Clolourful emotions reference as our basis and integrating it together with the Principles of PB4L (and strawberry and chocolate milkshakes) we know that Alex, Flynn, Ford, Kai and Logan have started off 2022 in the very best way possible.

He Waka Eke Noa - We’re all in this together