Reinforcing Expected Behaviours

All staff are required to verbally reinforce students when they demonstrate safe, respectful or responsible behaviours from our matrix. When using behaviour specific praise/verbal reinforcement, staff are to include the behaviour expectation and the specific matrix behaviour (see examples below). Behaviour specific praise is an evidenced based strategy that has been shown to dramatically improve classroom climates and improve student behaviour. There are articles available on behaviour specific praise. The pathway to access the articles is as follows: Curriculum → Positive Behaviour Support → Readings → Behaviour Specific Praise.

Behaviour Specific Praise = (your words + behaviour expectation + specific behaviour)

• “Nice! You were safe and kept your body to yourself.”
• “You were responsible and put your rubbish in the bin. Great stuff!”
• “Excellent! You asked for help when you needed it. That was responsible.”
• “You were respectful when you understood that others have a different opinion.”

All staff are able to issue a student, groups of students, an entire class or part of a class positive behaviour Credits on Compass using the appropriate setting’s chronicle template. Prior to issuing the credit behaviour specific praise should be used. This assist the student to associate their positive behaviour with the credit. Tutorial videos that demonstrate how to issue a credit to student/s can be accessed as follows: Curriculum → Positive Behaviour Support → Reinforcing expected behaviours → How to issue credits videos.

When issuing credits it is vitally important that they are not used as a bribe. Students need to independently demonstrate the positive behaviour before the staff member can use behaviour specific praise and issue a credit on Compass. Staff are not to say “If you do X I will give you a credit”. This would be an example of bribery which is not how credits are designed to be utilised.

Students are able to exchange their credits for reinforcing items at the X-Change. The X-Change is open each week during the first half of lunch. Students can see when and where the X-Change is open on their Compass schedule.

How issue credits to:
– An entire class (Office365)
– Part of a class (Office365)
– A group of students (Office365)
– An individual student (Office365)