Personal and Social Skills

Personal and social skills are essential to enable individuals to understand themselves and others, and manage their relationships, lives, work and learning more effectively. They involve obtaining knowledge, skills, and attitudes to develop healthy identities, regulate emotions, keep people safe, handle challenging situations constructively, show empathy for others, and establish and maintain supportive relationships. Personal and social skills require teaching practices that are research-based, aligned with curriculum and the needs and strengths of the student. They need to be both explicitly taught and implicitly practised throughout the day and across subject areas. The progression of learning in personal and social skills should be assessed and evidenced to report on student growth.  

In this WSAPBS, Personal and Social Skills is: 

• Teachers knowing and understanding what personal and social skills are and the impact it has on student learning 
• Teachers modelling and reinforcing personal, social and emotional skills, behaviours and the school’s defined School Wide Expectations
• Having a whole school plan to actively teach personal, social and emotional skills, behaviours and mental health awareness, through curriculum 
• Collaboratively developing a whole school progression of learning for teaching, assessing personal, social and emotional skills, behaviours and mental health awareness through curriculum 
• Collaboratively enacting the plans and processes for teaching, assessing and reporting on personal, social and emotional skills, behaviours and mental health awareness of students
• Using student data and evidence of student learning to make planned adjustments to ensure a rate of progress for every student in the development of personal, social and emotional skills, behaviours and mental health awareness 

Whole School Approach to Positive Behaviour Co-ordinators
Trish Martin and Kylee Bertacco