As part of this, students receive ‘Gotchas’ when teachers ‘catch’ students following the four PBL focuses - I am safe, I am respectful, I am responsible, and I am a learner.

Every four weeks, the PBL student committee meets with St Columban’s Assistant Principal, Mrs Whiting, to select a new PBL focus.

For the past few weeks, the school’s focus has been ‘I am responsible’, which includes caring for the school environment, wearing the school uniform with pride and being in the right place at the right time.

Recently, St Columban’s have mainly been focusing on caring for the school environment due to the presence of rubbish down under the weather shed. This focus has ensured that students are putting their rubbish in the bins.

Rewinding to the beginning of the year, St Columban’s Principal, Mrs Reed set a whole school challenge – if all classes combined received 5000 Gotchas, the school could have a mufti day.

During the middle of term, the school captains went around the school and added up all the gotchas from every class, hoping that the answer would at least be close to 5000 because we still had one term to reach the goal.

The final number ended up being over 5000!

The captains raced back to the classroom and entered very disappointed, acting as if we didn’t reach 5000.

We gave Mrs Whiting the piece of paper for the real answer and when she opened it, she saw that the score was over 5000 and looked at us very confused. The she realised that the school had completed their mission.

As a reward for completing our challenge, St Columban's had an out of uniform day for the last day of Term 3, along with a pizza lunch supplied from our very hard-working canteen ladies.

We will have to negotiate with Mrs Reed for a new reward next term so we have something else to work towards!

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