Respectful Relationships

Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships (RRRR) is a core component of the Victorian Curriculum from Foundation to Year 12. It is a mandated initiative in all government schools.

As well as teaching academic skills, it is part of the fundamental business of schools to promote student resilience, wellbeing and positive social attitudes. One way that schools can achieve this is through the teaching of evidence-based programs that explicitly foster personal and social capabilities. The lessons designed in the Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships program help children and young people to build and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes and skills necessary to: 

• Understand and manage emotions
• Set and achieve positive goals
• Feel and express empathy
• Establish and maintain positive relationships 
• Make responsible decisions 
• Develop resilience to deal with change 
• Create positive gender norms
• Contribute to social cohesion.

The Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships learning materials use a range of collaborative learning strategies which in themselves, provide opportunities to develop social skills. The activities also explicitly engage with the key content topics of: 

• Emotional literacy 

• Decision making

• Problem solving

• Positive self-regard

• Stress management

• Positive coping 

• Help-seeking and peer support

• Gender and identity

• Positive gender relationships. 

This term our students have been learning about the following topics:

TOPIC 5: STRESS MANAGEMENT 

Children and young people experience a range of personal, social and work-related stressors in their everyday lives. Activities within this topic have an explicit focus on teaching positive approaches to stress management. Assisting students to recognise their personal signs and symptoms of stress, and to develop strategies that will help them to deal with stress effectively, will help students cope with future challenges. The activities focus on the ways in which self-calming strategies can be used to manage stressful situations. 

TOPIC 6: HELP-SEEKING 

Learning activities in this topic area are designed to help students discuss the importance of seeking help and providing peer support when dealing with problems that are too big to solve alone. This helps to normalise and de- stigmatise help-seeking behaviour. Scenario-based activities help students identify situations in which help should be sought, identify trusted sources of help, and practice seeking help from peers and adults.