Case Study: Measuring Wellbeing with Life Skills GO at Killarney Vale Public School

As a Teacher Librarian, Wellbeing Coordinator, and Assistant Principal for Curriculum and Instruction at Killarney Vale Public School on the Central Coast, Candice Taylor wears many hats. Candice has been in education for over 10 years and holds both a Masters of Education and a Masters of Education in Teacher Librarianship. She was faced with a significant challenge in measuring student wellbeing and behavior accurately until the school implemented Life Skills GO.

Before Life Skills GO, Killarney Vale Public School had no means of measuring student wellbeing accurately. The only indicators available were negative, such as attendance and behavioral incidents. There was a need to drill down into student behavior to identify how best to support them. But, without any accurate data over the long term, they couldn't do it. Life Skills GO provides a broader depth of understanding on a student that traditional PBL lessons couldn't deliver.

The school was also using Zones of Regulation to measure student wellbeing but found that just using a visual check-in didn't provide confidentiality or tracking. There was a need to capture students' emotional state to identify whether they needed additional support, and Life Skills GO provided a solution that complemented the Zones of Regulation.

Implementing Life Skills GO enabled the school to track individual student wellbeing from Year 1 to 6, providing a holistic view of their emotional state. It's a quick process, providing the necessary data to pick up on students who might have gone unnoticed. Candice notes that over 70% of students preferred Life Skills GO over traditional PBL lessons, driven by the student voice, as it provides a platform for direct conversations about student wellbeing using the emotional language of the check-in.

Life Skills GO has been a game-changer for Killarney Vale Public School. The dashboard provides valuable information on students' emotional states, including time-stamped context, providing triangulation of data. The school had over 45,000 check-ins in one year, providing a wealth of information that has been instrumental in picking up on student habits and providing additional support.

The platform scaffolds emotions as students grow, making it easy to measure wellbeing holistically, breaking the class summary down into videos, quizzes, and questions that measure whether students have grasped the core concepts of the lessons. Life Skills GO has provided a means to make data actionable by providing consistency with check-ins, with daily check-ins being the non-negotiable.

The greatest benefits of Life Skills GO for Killarney Vale Public School have been the data, the understanding of students, and the holistic tracking of a child. Candice notes that workload has been significantly reduced as the data is collated, eliminating the need for manually creating presentations by pulling data. Life Skills GO has also been beneficial in reducing the workload of traditional PBL lessons, providing a platform to measure student understanding and core concepts of the lessons.

In conclusion, measuring student wellbeing is an essential aspect of providing a quality education that meets the needs of every child. Life Skills GO has enabled Killarney Vale Public School to track student wellbeing accurately, providing a wealth of data that is actionable and provides support to students who need it. Candice recommends that other schools give Life Skills GO a go, as it blends beautifully with other programs and provides a platform that captures the student voice, making it easy to get the kids the help they need.