RESPECTFUL RELATIONS

Respectful Relationships – Newsletter Article

The RRRR resource uses a research-informed approach to provide age-appropriate learning activities. These activities are designed to support students’ social and emotional learning so that they can develop the knowledge, attitudes and skills required for respectful relationships.

Social and emotional learning (SEL) is the term used to describe research-informed teaching and learning which explicitly promotes mental wellbeing by improving students’ social, emotional and positive relationship skills. Studies show that well-devised and well-implemented SEL programs help students to develop the relationship skills needed in everyday life, such as emotional awareness, empathy, perspective taking, self-regulation, cooperation, problem-solving, positive coping, responsible decision-making, peer support and help-seeking.

Recently in ACE, the Year 7’s have been learning about emotions and ways to identify and recognise emotions through body signals. They have learnt that to look after their mental health, they need to be able to describe their emotions, which in turn, help them understand themselves and how they respond in certain situations.

Below is an excerpt from one of their lessons:

‘Social and emotional learning includes the skills we use to help us manage our relationships, understand and control our own behaviour, and work out the best way to cope with the challenges we face. Like any other set of skills, we can improve them through deliberate practise. This week’s focus is on emotional awareness. Sometimes people describe emotional awareness as being ‘tuned in’, or understanding ourselves, plus understanding others. For this we need a good vocabulary to be able to describe our emotions.’

In class, the students were asked to brainstorm a list of emotions in groups. The challenge was to get to at least 20! The following is a sample of their responses. From this task, we hope students can better understand their feelings, and communicate their feelings more articulately to others.