WELLBEING

At Oatlands the Respectful Relationships Program is implemented across the school from Prep to Grade 6. 

The implementation of the Respectful Relationships Program supports the promotion and modelling of respect and equality, and assists to teach our students how to build healthy relationships, resilience and confidence.

The classroom program focuses on 8 key areas:

• Emotional Literacy: Students develop the ability to be aware of, understand, use vocabulary about and manage the emotional states of themselves and others.

• Personal Strengths: Students develop a vocabulary to help them recognise and understand various strengths and positive qualities in themselves and others. They identify the strengths they admire in others and those they need to draw on to engage with the challenges and opportunities that life presents.

• Positive Coping: Students develop language around coping, critically reflect on their coping strategies and extend their repertoire of positive coping strategies.

• Problem-solving: Students learn a range of problem-solving techniques that can be applied when confronting personal, social and ethical dilemmas. They engage in applied learning tasks in which they apply their problem-solving skills to be realistic.

• Stress management: This teaches students to learn a range of problem-solving skills through applied learning tasks, so that they are able to cope with challenges as they arise.

• Help-seeking: Help seeking is a coping strategy that involves seeking technical, instrumental, social or emotional support from other people.

• Gender and identity: These are age-appropriate learning activities that assist students to understand and critique the influence of gender norms on attitudes and behaviours (see clip linked below for an example of a discussion prompt).

• Positive gender relationships: This teaches students to build positive relationships between and within genders, and the importance of accepting difference and diversity.

Activities are incorporated weekly into our teaching and learning programs.

THERAPY DOG PROGRAM

Meet Archie! Archie is an accredited Therapy Dog who works with our school psychologist, Holly Wilson. Archie has undergone intensive training to be suitable to work in a school setting and he wears a special identification coat when at school.

Archie is extremely patient, loving and loyal and he is a great companion to the staff and students at Oatlands Primary School. Archie can join in class activities or sometimes he just sits quietly in the classroom while being patted. Some children are lucky enough to get special individual time with Archie. Archie especially loves it when children read to him or play with him.

Research shows that dogs are remarkable at lowering stress and anxiety levels and in doing so often defuse imminent explosions of frustration or negative behaviours. They can be a great way to encourage desirable behaviours and teach children to be calm in the classroom. Research shows that children find the non-judgmental ears of a therapy dog the perfect choice to improve their academic skills, particularly reading. Research also shows the benefits of having therapy dogs working with children who have additional needs.