Student Wellbeing

What an amazing Term we have had at St Joe's! It has been a wonderful term with lots of learning and activities in the Wellbeing space. It was great to have such an amazing Wellbeing Night with so many families coming along! We are grateful for how successful the night was and are looking forward to hosting a wellbeing event each year! There have been lots of wellbeing incursions this term as well that have been great for students to develop different social and emotional skills.

This Term in the Wellbeing Space we had a focus on Resilience and Stress Management. What does that mean? Well, this term we wanted to improve our student's skills in bouncing back when things get hard as well as discovering and experiencing things or skills they can use when they need to calm down or bring their emotions back to a regular feeling. 

Through our Respectful Relationships Program, the students have developed a bank of skills to help manage stress and promote bouncing back. These have included breathing exercises, learning about having good health (good food and rest), mindfulness meditations, mindfulness stretching and poses and physical activity. These elements were also explored and emphasised in our whole school incursion which focused on things we can do for our mind and body. In Friendship groups, we explored Resilience through games and activities that involved the groups working together.

PBL- Term Wrap Up

This Term in PBL we have had a focus on a few different areas!

Weeks 2 & 3- Focus: Being Respectful and Responsible during indoor play. Actions Taken: Talked about what types of things are appropriate to play indoors, Talked about noise levels and Practice routines.

Weeks 4 & 5- Focus: Being Respectful and Responsible during in the classroom- blurting. Actions Taken: Talked about when Blurting is ok and when it is not, Identified ways that can help us not to blurt and Created a poster to remind us about Blurting.

Weeks 9 & 10- Focus: What Resilience is and how we can show Resilience. We are learning to use calm strategies. We are learning what the Zones of Regulation are.

Actions Taken: 

The Foundation students looked at the story called ‘My Colour Monster’ which talked about a Monster having trouble expressing emotions because they were all mixed up together! Here are their colour monsters with the different emotions around them!

Yellow- Happy, Red- Angry, Green- Calm, Blue- Sad, Purple- Fear, Black- Scared, Orange- Silly and Pink- Love

Respectful Relationships

Dear Parents and Carers, 

During Term 4, students will continue engaging with the Rights, Resilience and Respectful Relationships program. The Respectful Relationships program supports schools and early childhood settings to promote and model respect, positive attitudes and behaviours. 

Respectful Relationships promotes respect and gender equality and helps students learn how to build healthy relationships. It prepares students to face challenges by developing problem-solving skills and building resilience and confidence. Schools involved in the Respectful Relationships initiative to create a culture of respect and gender equality, by looking at their practices and policies to drive meaningful change.

The Royal Commission into Family Violence identified the critical role that schools and early childhood education have in creating a culture of respect to change the story of family violence for future generations.

In 2016, Respectful Relationships education became a core component of the Victorian Curriculum from foundation to year 12 and is being taught in all government and Catholic schools and many independent schools.

During Term 4, students will be engaging with Topic 7- Identity. Respectful Relationships lessons occur fortnightly in the classrooms. Below is a summary of what the students will be learning about. To cater for our students, we have also altered the lessons and have decided to teach the students the given lessons in the year level below to take smaller steps and to tread lightly with the content.

F/1/2

• Students will reflect on their Identity 
• Students will become aware of ‘Stereotypes’. This will be discussed through likes and dislikes such as ‘some people believe that girls can’t play with cars’
• Students will develop an appreciation for differences and diversity in the classroom

3/4

• Students will reflect on their identity: likes, dislikes, strengths
• Students will develop an awareness of positive and negative Stereotypes and norms
• Students will develop an appreciation for differences and diversity in the classroom

5/6

• Students will analyse and reflect on their identities
• Students will identify the negative and positive effects of Norms and Stereotypes 
• Students will develop an appreciation for differences and diversity in the classroom

We have sought advice from MACS (Melbourne Archdiocese of Catholic Schools) through the implementation of this topic.