Wellbeing News

Wellbeing: Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships 2025 Introduction 

Elsternwick Primary School is a proud Respectful Relationships school.

Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships education is part of the Victorian Curriculum and is delivered by all Victorian government schools. It supports students to develop the knowledge, attitudes and skills needed to build and maintain respectful relationships. 

Research shows that providing respectful relationships education at school can lead to positive impacts on students’ academic outcomes, mental health, classroom behaviour and relationships.

Our school uses the Department of Education’s evidence-based teaching and learning resources to teach our students about Respectful Relationships from Prep to Grade 6. The Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships resources have 8 topics that teach students about emotional literacy, personal and cultural strengths, resilience, problem solving, stress management, help seeking, gender norms and stereotypes and positive gender relations. 

An example lesson from the emotional literacy topic is ‘Emotions Statues’ where students name emotions that students can experience at school and show how emotions can be seen in body language. This is a lesson designed for younger year students and is essential for building an understanding of ourselves and others at the start of the school year. 

An example lesson from the personal and cultural strengths topic is ‘How we use our personal and cultural strengths’ where students identify their personal and cultural character strengths. This lesson supports the creation of classroom agreements and empowers students to be confident, resilient and respectful. 

If you have any questions about Respectful Relationships education, you can contact Leanne Williams or visit the Victorian Government’s Respectful Relationships page: https://www.vic.gov.au/respectful-relationships

Wellbeing: Body Bright 2025 Introduction

In 2025 we are continuing our partnership with Butterfly Body Bright to help build a school community that supports students to feel confident in their bodies.  

Butterfly Body Bright is a body image program designed for Australian Primary Schools. It promotes positive attitudes and behaviours towards the body, eating and physical activity. This strength based and evidence informed program has been developed by the Butterfly Foundation and aims to support our staff, students and families. Early research into the program has shown positive improvements in children’s body image. 

Butterfly Body Bright has 6 themes which target an important factor that contributes to the development of children’s body image. The themes are:

BRAVE against appearance teasing

RESILIENT to unhelpful media messages

INCLUSIVE of all bodies

GRATEFUL for our bodies

HAPPY from joyful movement

THOUGHTFUL with our eating

Students will be exploring the 6 themes of Butterfly Body Bright in their Wellbeing lessons. The lessons will be taught in conjunction with the Respectful Relationships curriculum, with both programs complementing one another. 

In future newsletters we will share information about being Body Bright and explore each of the 6 Body Bright themes. You can access free resources and further information about the program at www.butterflybodybright.org.au/families.