Respectful Relationships at Solway Primary School

At Solway, students participate in Respectful Relationships lessons each week as part of our wellbeing curriculum. Respectful Relationships is a Victorian Government initiative designed to help young people develop the social and emotional skills needed to build positive relationships, understand themselves and others, and contribute to a safe and supportive school community.

Through these weekly lessons, students learn skills such as recognising and managing emotions, showing empathy, appreciating differences, resolving conflicts respectfully and developing a strong sense of self. These lessons support students to build healthy relationships with their peers and adults, both at school and beyond.

This term, students have been exploring

Topic 1: Emotional Literacy and;
Topic 2: Personal and Cultural Strengths

Emotional Literacy focuses on helping students recognise, name and understand a wide range of emotions in themselves and others. Students learn that emotions can influence how we think and behave, and they practise ways to express their feelings appropriately and respond to others with empathy and understanding.

Personal and Cultural Strengths encourages students to recognise their own strengths, interests and qualities, while also appreciating the strengths and contributions of others. Students explore how our personal experiences, backgrounds and cultures shape who we are, and they learn to value diversity within our school community. These lessons help students build confidence, resilience and a strong sense of belonging.

Respectful Relationships lessons play an important role in supporting students’ wellbeing, positive behaviour and respectful interactions, and complement the work we are doing with the SWPBS framework.

School Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS) and Token Rewards

We use School Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS) to help create a safe, respectful and positive learning environment for all students. SWPBS focuses on explicitly teaching behaviour expectations, recognising positive behaviours and supporting students to make good choices.

Our school expectations guide how we learn and interact with each other across all areas of the school, including classrooms, the playground and shared learning spaces. Teachers regularly teach and revisit these expectations so that students clearly understand what positive behaviour looks like in different situations.

One way we recognise and celebrate students who demonstrate these expectations is through our token reward system.

When staff notice students showing our school expectations, they may award them a token. These tokens are collected for each of our school houses' throughout the term. This encourages students to work together and support one another in demonstrating positive behaviours across the school.

At the end of the term, we count the tokens earned by each house. The house with the highest number of tokens gets to choose a whole-school reward for everyone to enjoy. Some of the possible rewards for Term 1 include: extra playtime, pyjama day, an extra icy pole, a whole-school picnic on the oval.

The token system helps reinforce the behaviours we value as a school community while also building a sense of teamwork and celebration across the school.

We look forward to seeing which house receives the most tokens!

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