Junior School
Junior School News
The Challenge week and Respectful Relationships program took place Tuesday 22 - Friday 25 August. The program focused around educating the Year 8 and 9 students about the importance of developing respectful relationships to prevent gender based violence.
Just like other major social and health issues such as smoking and road toll, evidence shows that family violence can be prevented by working across the whole population (in this case, all schools) to address the attitudes, beliefs and knowledge that support violence.
The Victorian Government is investing $21.8 million to deliver Respectful Relationships and as part of this initiative Victorian schools will be supported to review their practices and policies, and model respectful relationships and gender equality across the whole school community.
A good education is about more than simply getting good marks. It is about becoming a member of society and succeeding in life – knowing how to build respectful relationships is key to achieving this. When young people build positive relationships with their teachers and peers they feel safer and happier at school, are more resilience and have positive social attitudes. Positive relationships increase a young person’s sense of social contentedness and belonging to school and family, and result in better health and academic outcomes.
Further information about Respectful Relationships, is available on the Department of Education and Training website: www.education.vic.gov.au/respectfulrelationships
ur teachers along with special performances delivered age-appropriate teaching and learning materials. The evidence-based materials are designed to enable teachers to develop student’s social and emotional capabilities, build positive, healthy and respectful relationships, make responsible decisions and create positive gender relations. The initiative also provides resources to best support young people who are affected by family violence.
Our Respectful Relationship - Challenge Week program is aimed to challenge the students physically, socially, intellectually and emotionally. The following activities were organised throughout the week to challenge students:
- Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationship lessons
- Class act performance “show some respect”
- Bubble soccer
- Circus workshop
- Improvisation
- Cartooning
- Trivia
- Hip hop dancing
- Challenge games
The following highlights have been captured from Year 8 students who were involved in the program.
“During challenge week I enjoyed hip hop dance because dance is a good hobby that I like and it was really fun.”
“My highlight was hip hop because it was energising and fun. It also taught me to include people.”
“During challenge week my highlight was hip hop dance because it was really fun and my favourite thing was cartooning because I can draw a cartoon character.”
“My highlight was hip hop because I became more confident which will help with my singing performances.”
“My highlight of challenge week for me was bubble soccer because it was really fun and the bubbles were awesome.”
We would like to take this opportunity to thank the Year 8 and 9 students for their participation in the program and the enthusiasm they brought to many of the activities that they have never tried before.
We would also like to thank the staff involved in delivering the respectful relationship program: Emma Morris, Alirra Scott, Jake Barnett, Chris Knight, Fiona Matthews, Simone Hargrave and Casey Lawson and the school support team/teaching staff for their assistance in ensuring the program ran smoothly.
Emma Morris, Emily Phibbs, Casey Lawson
Junior School Team