Life Skills GO Webinar Replay · Inglewood Primary School
From a Paper Chart to a Whole-School System: Inglewood Primary School's Three-Year Journey
Inglewood Primary School is a rural Victorian primary school with a genuinely complex cohort and a lean leadership team. Classroom Teacher and Mental Health and Wellbeing Leader Jayne Lawson explains how three years of embedding Life Skills GO replaced a paper check-in system that could not be tracked from one day to the next with a whole-school routine that now shapes early identification, referral pathways, wellbeing meetings and conversations with families.
Meet the Speakers
A conversation between the Classroom Teacher and Mental Health and Wellbeing Leader at a rural Victorian primary school, and the Educational Partnerships Manager who worked with the school through its Life Skills GO rollout.
About Inglewood
Who Is Inglewood Primary School?
Inglewood is a small rural town in central Victoria, about 50 kilometres from Bendigo on the Calder Highway towards Mildura, with a population of around 1,500 people. Inglewood Primary School currently has 55 students enrolled, Prep to Year 6, and works closely with nearby communities including Bridgewater, Tarnagulla, Deniliquin, Wedderburn and Kingower, sharing sporting fixtures, cluster days and interleague teams when any one school does not have enough students of its own.
Inglewood is a lower socioeconomic town, and the school's enrolment reflects a genuinely complex cohort: eighteen per cent of students are in out-of-home care, fourteen per cent are Koorie students, and fourteen per cent are disability funded. Around twenty-six per cent of students are ASD diagnosed and thirty-three per cent are ADHD diagnosed, with forty-three per cent of students currently on an Individual Education Plan.
A teacher who has worn every wellbeing hat at once
Jayne Lawson has been teaching for 21 years, starting in rural northwestern New South Wales before four years teaching in the United Kingdom, and now ten years at Inglewood. She originally studied social work before switching into teaching, wanting to keep pursuing that wellbeing interest alongside her love of the classroom. At the school, she currently holds three roles at once, Disability Inclusion Specialist, Mental Health and Wellbeing Leader, and the staff member implementing School Wide Positive Behaviour Support, and finds that what she builds in one role consistently supports the other two.
"The school is very much at the heart and soul, both schools, Catholic and here, are very much at the heart and soul of the town."
Before Life Skills GO: A Paper Chart That Could Not Be Tracked
After 2020, Inglewood noticed more students arriving at school dysregulated. Staff attended Berry Street Educational Model training together, and each classroom went looking for its own way to put the training's lessons on daily check-ins and emotional regulation into practice.
Every Classroom Built Its Own System
After the Berry Street training, each classroom worked out its own check-in approach. What worked for the Prep room did not necessarily match what worked for the Year 5 and 6 classes.
A Scale With No Memory
A paper number line, using the book "The Colour Monster" and photo headshots Blu Tacked along a scale, let Jayne see how a student felt in the moment. It carried nothing over from one day to the next.
A Photo Chart Became a Distraction
Five and six year olds loved taking their photo off the chart and moving it along the scale, creating its own classroom disruption before the check-in itself was complete.
Jayne Lawson describes the paper check-in system Inglewood used before Life Skills GO.
Choosing Life Skills GO: One System From Prep to Year Six
Jayne took on a wellbeing-focused leadership initiative through the Victorian Teaching and Leadership Academy, and went looking for a platform that could replace the classroom-by-classroom paper system with something consistent across the whole school.
The paper chart had shown Jayne two clear gaps: there was no way to look back at a pattern over time, and there was no shared system that every classroom, and every casual relief teacher, could pick up and use the same way. Both had to be solved before the data could be trusted.
Jayne describes searching specifically for an online platform that was easy to use, ran the same way from Prep to Year 6, and gave the school real-time data it could review for patterns later, not just a read on how a student felt in one moment.
One system, every year level
A platform that runs from Prep through to Year 6, so the approach stays the same no matter which students or teachers come and go.
Easy enough for a relief teacher
If a CRT (casual relief teacher) came in for the day, staff needed to be able to show them how to use it in minutes.
Data that could be looked back on
Not just a read on how a student felt right now, but patterns that could be reviewed later and followed along.
Real time, without more paperwork
Real-time data on emotions and behaviour, without adding another manual system for staff to run.
"I went searching for an online platform that we were going to be able to, easy to use. Everyone will be able to, it doesn't matter which children come, go throughout the year, which teachers come and go. It'll be a system that runs from prep or kindergarten all the way up to year six, and that the children will all know what to do. So if we ever had a CRT come in or anything like that, yeah, we'd be able to sort of show them how to use it, which was great."
"Tracking that data, I think that was the big thing, too. Be able to look at it later and say, oh, yep, okay, these are the patterns we're seeing, and follow along that. We wanted that real-time data and just to be able to check those emotions and behaviors."
Jayne Lawson on what Inglewood was searching for before finding Life Skills GO.
Three Years In: Building the Habit and Sharing the Load
Whole-school use at Inglewood grew one part at a time. What started as a daily check-in has grown into a two-adult morning routine, a weekly wellbeing meeting, and care pathways that start the moment a check-in is flagged.
One staff member runs the welcome circle each morning. The other checks Life Skills GO data from the start, to see who has checked in sad or angry.
Students flagged in the data are pulled aside for a quick conversation, and that is where Inglewood's care pathways begin.
Teachers note a short comment against each check-in, so a pattern reviewed later still carries what actually happened that day.
Jayne, the principal and the wellbeing chaplain meet each week to cross-reference check-in data with attendance and flag students for follow-up.
"We run a welcome circle in the morning, for example, and we'll have one of the teachers in the room or the ES running that morning circle, or welcome circle, with positive primers and all those sorts of things. And the other adult in the room is checking that Life Skills Go data from the very get-go to check in who has checked in sad, who has checked in angry, so that then we can grab them for that little one-on-one conversation, and that's where our care pathways will start from there."
"We meet each week for a wellbeing meeting. So in our team, it's just myself, our principal, and our wellbeing chaplain. But we pull up our attendance data, and we also pull up our Life Skills Go data. So we get all of that up to the whole school data because we can do that obviously from the executive end."
Jayne Lawson on how Inglewood's leadership team uses Life Skills GO data week to week.
Every Student Known: Three Years of Change
Inglewood's shift has been gradual and deliberate. What started as a single daily check-in has reshaped morning routines, weekly wellbeing meetings, and conversations with families.
Before · The Paper Chart
- A paper number line showed how a student felt in the moment, with no way to see it again the next day
- Every classroom ran its own version of the check-in, because staff were all just learning and playing with it
- Wellbeing conversations with families relied on what a teacher happened to remember and mention
- No consistent way to see which students were quietly struggling from one week to the next
The Shift · Building the Daily Habit
- Daily check-ins built into the morning welcome circle, split between two adults in the room
- A comment box used to capture quick context behind a check-in
- Weekly wellbeing meetings cross-referencing check-in data with attendance records
- Care pathways and Ready to Learn plans triggered directly from what the check-in shows
After · Three Years On
- Staff can see a student's pattern over time, not just a single day's snapshot
- The same check-in framework runs from Prep to Year 6, and any CRT can be shown how it works in minutes
- Leadership can cross-reference check-in data with attendance to decide who needs a phone call home
- Families can be shown a pattern, such as a run of tired check-ins, rather than a one-off impression
"It enables conversations about students being tired has been a really big one. That's been really, really useful for that."
"If the patterns are identified in the data, it just leads to those conversations that might not otherwise have been had. It just helps us to provide support in greater depth."
Teaching Emotional Recognition, One Check-In at a Time
Inglewood learned early that the check-in data is only as good as the emotional vocabulary behind it. Students need to be explicitly taught what an emotion is called, what it looks like, and why they might be feeling it, before their check-in can be trusted.
Starting With Six Core Emotions
Younger students learn the platform's basic six emotions first, taught through Respectful Relationships and the other SEL programs already running at the school.
Building the Context Behind a Feeling
Once students can name an emotion, staff work on the context around it too, helping students connect what they are feeling to why, before linking that back to how they check in.
Older Students Learning Independently
Students in the upper grades log in to work through their own learning journey on the platform, building a richer emotion vocabulary at their own pace, headphones in.
A Feeling That Started at the School Gate
One student checked in as sad before even reaching the classroom. Rather than reading that as about the room, staff can ask, and often find the feeling belongs to something else entirely, like saying goodbye to a parent that morning.
"They must understand what they're pressing when they press the button. You really have to have a really clear understanding of what they're telling you."
Jayne Lawson on how Inglewood explicitly teaches emotional recognition and regulation, year by year.
What Inglewood Can See Now That It Couldn't Before
Three years of daily check-ins are changing what shows up at every level of the school: for students, for staff sharing the wellbeing load, for leadership, and for families.
For Students
Before: which students were quietly struggling was mostly noticed through a behaviour incident, not the students sitting silently with a worry.
Now:
- A private way to flag a feeling without raising a hand or causing a scene
- A one-to-one conversation in the moment, and a Ready to Learn plan to use if more time is needed
- A record that goes with them if a CRT or new teacher is in the room
For Staff and the Wellbeing Team
Before: every classroom ran its own version of the check-in, and support for a struggling student rested on whichever teacher happened to notice.
Now:
- Education Support staff trusted to help run the check-in and share the load with teachers
- A shared comment box, so a colleague picking up the pattern later has context, not just an emotion
- The wellbeing chaplain, the kitchen garden program and bounce-back conversations sharing the wellbeing load
For Leadership
Before: an emerging concern was mostly noticed if it showed up as a behaviour incident, or if a teacher happened to remember to mention it.
Now:
- A weekly wellbeing meeting cross-referencing check-in data with attendance records
- A shortlist of students to flag for a phone call home, built from the data rather than memory
- A quick check that a click reflects what is really going on, not a habit or a misunderstanding
For Parents and Families
Before: a parent's sense that something felt off at home had no shared reference point with the school day.
Now:
- Patterns like repeated tired check-ins giving parents and teachers a concrete starting point
- Conversations about sleep and bedtime routines that draw on what the child has been checking in as at school
Jayne Lawson on how check-in data shapes conversations with families, including her own daughter's.
What We Learned: Key Takeaways
Three years into whole-school use, distilled into what Jayne would tell any school starting out.
Follow the Coach's Advice: Take It Slow
Start with the check-in alone. Add the mindfulness and brain-break videos later, once that habit is solid.
Bring the Whole Team Onto the Platform
A lean leadership team has fewer staff on the ground to do the deeper work, so everyone needs to believe in the system before it can carry any weight.
Use Your ES to Share the Load
Checking and data work does not have to sit only with teaching staff. Education Support staff can take on real responsibility, not just another job for an already stretched teacher.
Teach the Emotions Before You Trust the Data
Model a check-in properly so students understand what they are doing. A check-in nobody understands is not worth much as data.
Re-Teach It All Year, Not Just at the Start
Explicit teaching of emotions is not a once-off. Students get distracted or forget, so revisiting the why has to keep happening as the year goes on.
Let Wellbeing Meetings Do the Deep Thinking
Regular data analysis and wellbeing meetings can surface things a school had no idea were going on, and open the door to support beyond the school gate.
Watch the Full Webinar Replay
Hear the whole conversation between Jayne Lawson and Marcus Barr, including the stories behind the moments above and Jayne's advice for schools building a whole-school wellbeing system from the ground up.
Webinar Replay with Inglewood Primary School
Closing Words
"Thank you to your whole team for, I guess, just developing such an incredibly important resource and tool, and it's certainly helping us in a small school and lightening our load a lot. So yeah, it's great, and I think it's helping our wider school community, and anyone I talk to about it has decided they want it on board as well."
"It always comes down to the amazing people behind the systems that are in place, and at the end of the day, we are a tool, but a tool is only as good as the person behind the hammer."
See What a Whole-School Check-In Habit, Backed by Data, Can Do
Book a personalised demo with our education wellbeing specialist. We will show you how Life Skills GO helps schools identify concerns early, respond before they escalate, and measure improvement over time, without adding to staff workload.
Life Skills GO works with schools of every size and context, from large metropolitan settings to small rural schools like Inglewood, where a lean leadership team and a complex cohort make early identification even more important.