From Asking How Are You to Seeing the Whole Child: Prairievale Public School’s Four-Year Journey
Prairievale Public School, in Bossley Park in Southwest Sydney, serves around 421 students across 15 mainstream classes and seven classes for diverse learners supporting children who are autistic, neurodiverse or living with a cognitive disability. The school has partnered with Life Skills GO for around four years, and the check-in is now embedded so deeply into daily practice that staff struggle to recall exactly when it began. It captures student voice, belonging, wellbeing and readiness to learn in real time, alongside attendance and behaviour data the school already collects.
By surfacing patterns, trends and emerging concerns to the right people at the right time, Life Skills GO helps Prairievale identify what may be happening at home before it shows up as a crisis at school. It has supported earlier identification of family hardship and domestic difficulty, more informed attendance conversations, and a whole-school culture where children talk openly about how they feel.
The Story in 60 Seconds
A short summary for anyone short on time. Everything below goes deeper.
The Challenge
Staff were asking students how they felt, then stopping, with no way to see a trend or connect a concern across a family.
What They Did
Leadership took the idea to staff, let teachers own how check-ins run and protected a consistent habit.
What Changed
Check-in patterns have supported earlier identification of family hardship and more informed attendance conversations.
Try This First
Let teachers own the decision, then customise the check-in to each class.
Who Is Prairievale Public School?
A government primary school in Bossley Park, in Southwest Sydney, serving around 421 students. The school has a high proportion of students from refugee backgrounds and is considered a disadvantaged area, which shapes how leadership thinks about support for students and their families alike.
Read more about the school
Prairievale runs 15 mainstream classes alongside seven classes for diverse learners, supporting children who are autistic, neurodiverse or living with a cognitive disability. Before introducing Life Skills GO, the school had already invested heavily in understanding behaviour, antecedents and functions of behaviour, and in teaching zones of regulation, so staff came to the platform with a strong existing foundation in emotional literacy.
Wellbeing at Prairievale is not treated as separate from family and community. Principal Rebecca Challenor describes supporting students in a way that also reaches their families, their parents and the wider community the school serves, because when a family is struggling at home, it may be reflected in whether a student arrives ready to learn.
Built on prior work, not from a standing start
Prairievale did not come to Life Skills GO cold. The school had already done significant work with staff around wellbeing goals, shared narratives and understanding zones of regulation. That groundwork, combined with a diverse learning unit already staffed by professionals experienced in this area, meant the school was, in Rebecca’s words, already on track and ready to go by the time it onboarded.
Four years on, the relationship has become part of the school’s everyday practice. Staff describe struggling to recall exactly when check-ins began, because the work with Life Skills GO founder Nikki Bonus in the lead-up blurred into the platform’s own rollout.
Rebecca ChallenorPrincipal“For my school to be effective, for my students to operate and to be the best learners they can be, I need to support them in a holistic way. That means not just them, but their families, their parents, everyone. If our families aren’t successful, if things are happening for them in their home, it flows onto the students that we serve. Then the students come, not ready to learn.”
Before Life Skills GO: Asking How Students Felt, Then Having Nowhere to Take the Answer
Before it began working with Life Skills GO, Prairievale had already built a strong foundation in understanding behaviour, antecedents and zones of regulation. What was missing was a way to see any of it over time.
We Were Just Asking, Then Stopping
Staff already understood emotions and zones of regulation, and they were talking to students about how they felt. But Rebecca is candid that the conversation went nowhere: staff would ask, hear the answer, and then stop. There was no data source and no next step, so the same question was being asked again and again without building into anything the school could act on.
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Today, that same question feeds a daily, whole-school picture. Staff can see how a student is checking in over days and weeks, not just in the moment they happen to ask, and can act on what may be driving disengagement or distress before it escalates.
No Way to See a Trend
Staff could not reliably see whether concerns were connected across siblings in the same family, or whether a pattern was building over a week rather than showing up as a single bad day. Without that visibility, the school felt limited in what it could do and was not seeing the impact it wanted from the conversations it was already having.
Attendance Data on Its Own Told Half the Story
A student arriving late could be waved through with a quick “why are you late” and a shrug of an answer. Without a connected view of how that student was checking in emotionally, staff had no way to tell an ordinary late morning from a pattern worth a closer look.
Rebecca ChallenorPrincipal“We were having these conversations, but we’re not able to see over time. We’re not seemingly able to see trends. You know, where if there’s similarities in siblings, and we felt limited in what we were doing, and we weren’t seeing the great impact.”
Building Buy-In: Let Teachers Own the How
The most common question other schools ask Prairievale is how it got such fast, near-universal staff buy-in. The answer started with the framing: what if we had a way to actually see what our students were telling us, and what if teachers, not leadership, decided how to use it.
Read the full buy-in story
Rebecca and her executive team had already spoken to Life Skills GO founder Nikki Bonus, so they understood what the system could do. But rather than announcing a decision, they took the idea back to staff and asked what they thought. They found a shared frustration: staff were asking students how they were feeling and then hitting a wall, with no way to see a trend or connect a concern across a family.
Staff in the school’s diverse learning unit, already experienced in zones of regulation and behaviour support, became what Rebecca calls her flag bearers. Rather than leadership dictating an approach, staff were encouraged to arrive at the idea themselves, so that when a teacher raised the possibility, leadership could say, well, there is actually a system for that.
It was not entirely without friction. The school genuinely worried, at the outset, that its community was still building its understanding and acceptance of mental health and wellbeing as topics, and treated that as a likely barrier to introducing check-ins. In the end, that concern did not materialise. When check-ins were raised in parent meetings, families were on board without hesitation.
Do the groundwork first
Build shared understanding of behaviour, antecedents and zones of regulation as staff, before introducing a platform to support it.
Talk to staff before deciding anything
Understand what teachers think and feel about the gap first, rather than presenting a finished decision.
Let the idea come from staff
Let teachers arrive at the “what if we had this” question themselves, then reveal that the answer already exists.
Test it as a staff before rolling it out
Bring the founder in, explore the platform together and “play” with it as a staff before deciding how to implement.
Give teachers autonomy, not a mandate
Do not dictate how check-ins should run in every room. Offer ideas, brainstorm as a collective staff, then let each teacher decide what fits their class.
Name the concern that turns out not to matter
Prairievale expected its community’s developing understanding of mental health and wellbeing to be a barrier to introducing check-ins. It was not. When check-ins were raised directly with families in meetings, there was no hesitation, and the barrier the school thought it would face turned out to be one it had created for itself.
Rebecca ChallenorPrincipal“We wanted the teachers and our staff to feel like they were empowered in making those decisions. And it was coming from them. So we wanted them to come up with it, and as soon as they would say, make a statement, or come up with this bright idea, we’d go, oh, well, there’s actually this system.”
Embedding It: Autonomy, Then Consistency
Prairievale did not roll out one fixed rule for every class. Instead, it protected two things: teacher autonomy over how check-ins run, and a habit consistent enough to be trustworthy.
Teachers Decide the Rhythm
Prairievale kept the decision of how often to check in with individual teachers, rather than setting a school-wide rule. Life Skills GO recommends a minimum of three check-ins a week for trustworthy data, but Prairievale’s staff, who already held that autonomy as a non-negotiable, set their own frequency depending on their class and what they were trying to understand.
Customise for Every Class
Prairievale’s diverse learners were, in Rebecca’s words, probably the easiest group to bring on board, because Life Skills GO can be customised rather than applied as one blanket set of emotions for every class. Kindergarten cohorts in the diverse learning unit started by learning what happy and sad actually look like, before check-in context was added on top, and staff built from there once that understanding was in place.
Pin the Students Who Need Watching
Teachers pin certain students so any concerns that emerge are easy to keep an eye on, checking in on those students as regularly as the situation calls for. Beyond that, use of the data depends on the purpose: attendance-related checks happen weekly or fortnightly alongside attendance tracking, while wellbeing data used for learning support insights is reviewed weekly by the school’s learning support leader.
Match the Use to the Question
Rather than a fixed rule, Prairievale adjusts how it uses the platform to the context. Attendance correlation happens on a slower cycle than a daily check-in, because that is the rhythm that answers the question leadership is actually asking. As Rebecca puts it, the flexibility is why it works for the school.
Protect the Consistency
Teachers took on the check-in with zero hesitation and no implementation issues from the first year.
Rebecca ChallenorPrincipal“It’s the flexibility that is why it works for us. It has so many functionalities that can be used across multiple areas of what you do in schools and how you operate.”
Every Student Known: Four Years of Change
The shift at Prairievale is best seen through what became possible once check-in data could be connected across siblings, classes and attendance records, rather than living in individual conversations that went nowhere.
Before
- We had already done a lot of work understanding behaviour, antecedents and zones of regulation, but we did not have the data sources to take the next step.
- We were asking students how they were feeling, and then stopping.
- We were not able to see over time, and we were not able to see trends.
- We had no way to see similarities across siblings in the same family.
- We felt limited in what we were doing and were not seeing the impact we wanted.
- Attendance conversations relied on a quick question and a quick answer, with no further context.
- We had no way to connect a family’s financial hardship to what a child was experiencing at school.
- We were playing a guessing game about what our families actually needed.
- We could not tell whether an individual student’s distressed check-ins were an isolated day or a pattern worth a closer look.
- We had limited capacity to respond before a concern had already become entrenched at home.
The Shift
- Teachers check in with their class individually, at a frequency they choose for their own room
- Students of concern are pinned so staff can keep a closer eye on them
- Attendance-related check-in data is reviewed weekly or fortnightly alongside attendance tracking
- Wellbeing check-in data is reviewed weekly by the learning support leader for insights relevant to that team
- Patterns across siblings and family context are watched over several days, not judged from a single check-in
- Insights are used in attendance meetings, parent conversations and presentations to system leadership
After
- Understanding behaviour, antecedents and zones of regulation is now supported by a real-time data source, not just professional judgement alone.
- Staff can see how a student is checking in over days and weeks, and act on what that may reveal.
- Staff can see trends over time, not just a single conversation.
- Similarities across siblings in the same family can be identified and followed up.
- The school has been able to target support more effectively and measure whether it is landing.
- Attendance conversations are grounded in correlated data between late arrivals and tired check-ins, making the discussion, and any plan that follows, more effective.
- Family financial hardship surfaced through check-in patterns led directly to a school community pantry, a lunch program and fully funded extracurricular activities.
- The school can act on evidence rather than guesswork when deciding where to direct support.
- A pattern across siblings checking in as sad and angry at home helped staff identify and respond to a domestic violence situation, and put supports in place for the family as a whole.
- Rebecca describes the school’s responsiveness as having increased through the system, beyond any level of responsiveness Prairievale had achieved before.
Rebecca ChallenorPrincipal“This system actually allows you to see things that you would have missed in the past. We wouldn’t have picked that up until probably later on, and maybe not at all. Our responsiveness as a school had increased through the system, and that allowed us to be better support networks for our families and the communities that we serve.”
What They Can See Now That They Couldn’t Before
The change at Prairievale shows up at every level of the school, in how a child is understood, how a teacher reads a room, how the learning support team plans its week, and how leadership works with families. Here is what Life Skills GO made visible, as the school describes it.
Now:
- Patterns in how a student checks in over several days, not just a single answer on a single day
- Sibling check-ins that, seen together, may point to what is happening in a shared home
- A daily, low-pressure way to say how they are feeling, without needing to raise a hand
- A social-emotional vocabulary they now use with each other, unprompted, in the playground
“We had two siblings that were coming to school, and we were looking at how they were checking in, and the context that they were checking in. Sad, angry at home. Both siblings. Different check-ins in the emotion sense, but it was both happening at home.”
Rebecca Challenor, PrincipalNow:
- Autonomy to decide their own check-in rhythm, rather than a rule imposed from above
- The ability to pin a student of concern and watch how they are checking in over time
- Emotion sets customised to the specific needs of their class, rather than one blanket set for every room
- An open classroom culture where children talk to each other about how they are feeling
Now:
- Wellbeing check-in data reviewed weekly for insights relevant to learning support planning
- A dug-deeper view of check-in patterns, such as repeated sadness or tiredness at home, that can be traced back to a root cause
- Evidence that supported the school in identifying financial hardship among families and responding with practical support
- A basis for targeting resources rather than relying on guesswork
“We found through our check-in that our families were going through a lot of financial difficulties. We dug deeper into that data, and we found that the financial struggles of our families were actually impacting our students.”
Rebecca Challenor, PrincipalNow:
- Attendance data correlated with check-in data, comparing students arriving late to students checking in tired
- Presentations to system leadership, such as the Executive Director, grounded in that correlated evidence
- Attendance meetings that arrive prepared with information about a student, rather than starting from a guess
- More informed, more effective conversations with parents about what may be happening at home
Giving Every Student a Voice
Prairievale runs seven classes for diverse learners alongside its mainstream classrooms. The platform’s ability to be customised, rather than applied as one blanket set of emotions for every child, is part of what let those classes take it up quickly and confidently.
Starting With What Happy and Sad Look Like
In the diverse learning unit, kindergarten cohorts began by learning the basics of key emotions before any check-in context was added. Rebecca describes building from that point of need, which is why she believes these classes were, in fact, some of the easiest to bring on board.
Diverse Learners Noticing for Each Other
Rebecca describes neurodiverse students as some of the first to come up to a teacher in the playground and report that a classmate was sad about something specific that had happened. The children themselves became part of how the school noticed a concern.
Two Boys and a Game of Chasey
One student was having trouble making good choices at school. Another boy asked him to play, saying he recognised, through hearing the student’s check-ins, that what he actually wanted was friends. Rebecca describes it as amazing: after that, the behaviour the school had been seeing from that student stopped.
Talking About Feelings Without Being Asked
Rebecca describes students knowing, without prompting, who in their class was happy, sad or angry that day, often by the end of lunch, because the students themselves talk about it. Checking in and talking about emotion has become, in her words, not a dirty word, not a negative thing, but something everyone has and can problem-solve around together.
Empathy the School Can Now See
Rebecca describes a genuine shift in how students respond to one another, showing empathy for peers and recognising when someone needs support, in ways she connects directly to the social-emotional understanding students build through checking in and hearing each other talk about it.
A Whole Family Behind Every Enrolment
Prairievale’s leadership takes seriously the idea that a child does not arrive at school alone. Rebecca describes children carrying the stress of what is happening at home into the classroom, which is part of why the school treats support for families, not just students, as central to its approach.
“He recognised, through hearing those check-ins, that it was just that he was craving friends, so he thought he would try something different. He gave him friends, and now, this doesn’t happen. You showed that you had empathy towards your peer. You understood, you listened to their feelings and emotions, and you recognised something.”Rebecca Challenor, Principal, Prairievale Public School
What We Learned: Key Takeaways
Four years of embedding Life Skills GO, distilled into what Rebecca would tell any school starting out.
Let Teachers Own the Decision
Do not dictate implementation from the top. Bring staff into the decision, respect them as professionals who know their students, and let the idea to adopt something new come from them wherever possible.
Build the Foundation Before the Platform
Prairievale’s staff already understood behaviour, antecedents and zones of regulation before Life Skills GO arrived. That shared language made adoption faster and more confident.
Customise Rather Than Standardise
A single set of emotions does not fit every class. Build from each cohort’s point of need, especially for diverse learners, and add complexity as understanding grows.
Name Your Assumed Barriers, Then Test Them
Prairievale assumed its community’s developing understanding of mental health and wellbeing would be a barrier. It was not. Do not let an untested assumption stop a conversation families may be ready to have.
Match the Use to the Question
There is no single right frequency. Review attendance-related data on a different rhythm to daily wellbeing check-ins, and let the purpose determine the cadence.
It Is Not Just a Data Tool
The value was never the check-in itself. It was that Prairievale wanted to support its students more effectively, and the check-in gave staff a way to see what to act on. The whole-school data is the byproduct of children, and families, who are better supported.
“You’re not going to get the learning without the wellbeing. It’s as simple as that. We have to understand the time that we’re working in, and the complexities these younger learners are facing, and working with systems like this allows us to be more responsive and supportive, so that we can get the greatest impact on what we’re trying to achieve. For me, it’s learning, so I need to know my kids are ready and settled in that class, their minds free and ready to take in that learning for the day.”
Bring Student Voice, Wellbeing and School Data Together All in One Place
Book a personalised conversation with a Life Skills GO education specialist. We will guide you through a short, interactive demonstration and show how the platform supports early identification, student voice, engagement and belonging, partnerships with families and carers, proactive intervention, staff decision-making and continuous whole-school improvement.
More about the demo, and reports
You will also have the opportunity to ask questions, explore how Life Skills GO could support your school’s priorities and determine whether it is the right fit for your community.
Life Skills GO supports schools and systems of every size, sector and context, including metropolitan, regional and remote schools, government, Catholic, independent and specialist settings, and support classes.
Put the Reports Into the Meetings You Already Hold
At Prairievale, the value of Life Skills GO was never the check-in on its own. The value came from what happened next, and from fitting that next step into meetings and routines the school already ran.
Check-in data is used alongside attendance tracking, in learning support planning, in attendance meetings and in conversations with families and with system leadership such as the Executive Director. Staff review the data with a specific question in mind, whether that is a pattern across siblings, a correlation with lateness, or a signal worth raising with a parent, rather than reviewing it for its own sake.
Staff do not need to build reports, analyse spreadsheets or learn a complex reporting system. The information is organised around the questions leaders and teachers are already asking, so it can be brought straight into an existing meeting rather than creating a new one.
Take These Ideas Further
Go deeper on the themes in Prairievale’s story, from a webinar featuring Rebecca Challenor to free expert guides you can use with your team tomorrow.
Related Webinars
Rebecca Challenor and Prairievale Public School feature in this Life Skills GO deep dive session on embedding a whole-school, data-informed approach to wellbeing.
Deep Dive Webinar: Prairievale Public School’s Wellbeing Journey
FeaturingNikki Bonus (Life Skills GO) & Rebecca Challenor (Prairievale Public School)
Watch the ReplayFree Guides & Expert Insights
Practical downloads for educators, leaders and families, including neuroscience-backed insight on emotions, learning and wellbeing.
Neuroscience of Emotions and Learning
FeaturingDr Mark Williams (Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience) with Nikki Bonus, on how emotions shape learning, grounded in brain research and Life Skills GO practice.
Get the Free ResourceWhy Students Disengage and What Helps Them Reconnect
FeaturingA practical guide from leading education, wellbeing and neuroscience experts, including Dr Mark Williams OAM, Professor Geoff Masters AO, Nikki Bonus and Karen Robertson.
Get the Free ResourceMore Guides & Resources
The full Life Skills GO resource library, including guides on whole-school wellbeing implementation, measurement and classroom practice.
Browse the Resource LibraryBook a personalised meeting with our education wellbeing specialist, to show you how Life Skills GO can help you achieve your school’s wellbeing goals. We will guide you through a short interactive demo and answer any questions to help you determine if Life Skills GO is right for your school.
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