Respectful Relationships-Please Read!

At Carlton North Primary School (CNPS), our Wellbeing Program is complemented and supported by two amazing initiatives aimed at developing students’ personal, social and emotional skills and resilience. One of these is the mandated Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships (RRRR) learning materials that cover eight topics of Social and Emotional Learning across Primary and Secondary Education. These topics include:

1. Emotional Literacy
2. Personal Strengths
3. Positive Coping
4. Problem Solving
5. Stress Management
6. Help Seeking
7. Gender and Identity
8. Positive Gender Relations

During 2023, students at CNPS have explored selected activities from topics 1-6 of the teaching and learning materials. Here are some of our amazing students sharing their understandings:

Positive Coping

Foundation

“I normally just sit on the floor and cross my legs like in yoga and do 10 deep breaths and say ‘You are OK now’.”

“I sit down somewhere like my bed and take deep breaths and go to my Mum or Dad and talk about it.”

“I go to my bed and stay in my bed to go to sleep. When I wake up, I am not angry anymore.”

Problem Solving and Help Seeking

1/2’s 

“If I have a problem in the playground, I could try and solve it myself. If I need help, I could ask a friend to help or ask a yard duty teacher for a band aid.”

Emotional Literacy

1/2’s

Can you name…

Comfortable emotions: Surprised, excited, happy, calm

Uncomfortable emotions: Discombobulated, agonised, sad, hurt, alone, excluded

Personal Strengths

3/4's 

Things that you are good at, something that you might enjoy.”

“I notice things more than other people, I am observant, like if someone’s upset, I notice when others don’t.”

“I am perseverant.”

“He is funny. He is focused.”

“I am creative and good at art. I am funny and like silly jokes. I am kind and loving and caring and helpful.”

Stress Management

5/6’s 

“Stress management is about how you manage showing and thinking about stress. Using strategies to help you deal with it. I like going for a walk around the school for fresh air, having a drink, huddling up (when I’m huddling into myself I can think deeply about things). Confronting the stressful event can help get it under control quickly, the more you ignore it, the more it builds up. Creating a list of things to do can manage the stress physically.”

“My strategies include taking a break, walking outside, taking deep breaths, using playground equipment to move my body. Taking a short rest can help, talking it through with friends, teachers or adults, making sure you eat well.” 

Term 4  in RR

Next term, all students will be exploring the topics ‘Gender and Identity’ and ‘Positive Gender Relations’ using age-appropriate teaching and learning materials. Topic 7 will help students explore the concept of their own identity, the impacts of labels, and what gender and identity means to them with a personal strengths focus. In Topic 8, they will be developing the skills needed to solve problems, set boundaries within their relationships, and play an active role in practicing safe and respectful behaviours in family, peer, community and online relationships. 

Term 4 Lesson examples (Topic 8):

Foundation – Sharing the play space and equipment

Students will visit popular play spaces and demonstrate how to play in a fair and friendly way in these different places. Students will be asked, “What emotions might people feel if people do not share the play equipment and play spaces fairly?”

The class will play a game all together and discuss how games played fairly can help them to make friends and enjoy being with each other. Students will practice identifying and naming fair and friendly play behaviours.

Year 1/2 – Creating a gender friendly classroom

Students begin this lesson by playing the ‘Harmony’ game, where students take turns of being the leader and doing slow, flowing actions for the class to follow and look as though they are moving as one.

Students will be asked, “What skills do we need to work in harmony in this game, or to move all as one?”, “What can we do if a friend is starting to lead an activity and is being mean or saying, ‘boys can’t play this game’ or ‘girls can’t play this game’?” Students will work in small mixed gender groups to suggest actions they can do to make a gender friendly classroom (eg. sit beside anyone on the mat, share play spaces with anyone, line up next to a boy or a girl).

Year 3/4 – Rights and Responsibilities

Students will be introduced to the terms ‘rights’ and ‘responsibilities’ and explore meaningful definitions. The students will form a list of key rights (eg. to an education, to be and feel safe, to have clean water) and explore their responsibilities related to themselves and others, linking these to our school values. Students will discuss what happens when people don’t keep to the rules or don’t get their jobs done, and explore people that are responsible and help us. The students will then work together to make a ‘Wall of thanks’ to show gratitude for the responsibility someone has shown in protecting or providing one or more of their rights.

Year 5/6 – Understanding power relations

Students begin this lesson by playing the ‘Robot and Controller’ game in pairs, where one student is the robot and the other is the controller. The controller stands opposite the robot and raises their hand with palm facing the robot’s nose. The robot must keep their nose the same distance from the controller’s hand at all times.

Students discuss how it felt to be the robot, what it was like to be the controller, what in real life was being the robot similar to, how we experience power, what responsibilities people in power have to respect the rights of others with less power, and build an understanding that it is not acceptable for others to abuse our rights.

Summary

Throughout the initiative, students will build their emotional literacy and resilience, as well as learning resilience strategies and ways to cope with stress in a positive way. All of the lessons are curated for each year level, meaning that students are introduced to appropriate themes and ideas in a sensitive and fun way. Lessons are also designed to be interactive and involve lots of hands-on activities and engaging group work, which students love! We pride ourselves on creating a safe, inclusive and respectful environment at CNPS, and this program helps us to continue to do this for all of our students and our valued school community. 

Who to Contact for Further Information

If you have any questions about the program, please feel free to contact the Respectful Relationships Leadership Team. We will endeavour to regularly update our school community on this initiative and continue to foster a safe, inclusive and respectful community for all. 

Kind regards,