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PBIS School-wide Behavior System-website news

School-wide System:  Our school uses a school-wide Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports (PBIS) System to teach and recognize expected behaviors.  As the name implies, the system is a proactive approach to establishing the behavioral supports and social culture that is needed for all students in a school to achieve social, emotional and academic success.

School-wide Expectations:  The school has several activities throughout the year to teach students expected school-wide behaviors.  Our school mascot is a tiger named PAWSitive.  We use the acronym PAWS to helps students remember our four over-arching expectations:

Please

Act Responsibly

Work and Play Safely

Show Respect

PAWSitive Incentives:

Throughout the year, students are recognized for their PAWSitive behavior.  Below are a few ways we acknowledge students for their behavior:

• PAWS tickets
  • Given out by all staff members
  • Kept in a white envelope in each child’s home folder with a label that reads,  “PAWS to be signed and returned to school.”
  • Serves as a communication to the family
• Raffles Prizes and  School Store
  • Students return the signed PAWS tickets and use them to purchase their prizes from the school store or raffle prizes
• Schoolwide Celebrations
  • When we hit our goal for number of PAWS given out, we earn a schoolwide celebration.

Communication with Families:

We want families to be aware of how the school is doing as a whole as well as their individual child.  Below are some communication tools that we use:

• PAWS Tickets – Look in your child’s white envelope to see how many PAWS tickets he/she has earned.
• Bi-Weekly Principal Update (Tiger News) – Look for news about a celebration that we have earned as a school.
• Minor Referral – Children are in the process of learning expected behaviors.  If your child has received a Minor Referral, you will get an email simply to keep you informed.  Minors are not serious issues and do not require any follow-up.  They are typically something that could be categorized as a minor disruption.  We do not recommend any consequences at home for minor referrals as we are sending the message that this was a small mistake that the child can learn from.  We suggest asking your child what happened and asking what he/she will do differently next time.
• Major Referral – You will receive a phone call and/or email about a major referral.  Major referrals are more serious in nature and are done with the intention to cause harm (physically or emotionally) to self or others.  Consequences in the form of restorative measures will be shared with the family and behavior expectations will be reviewed.  

Our behavior system emphasizes the positive expectations and reinforces them by recognizing outstanding behavior and character.