Relationships and Health Education

 

We are delighted to announce that our school is participating in a well-structured Relationship Education programme for Catholic primary schools, titled Life to the Full. 

As you may be aware, Relationship Education becomes statutory for all primary schools from September 2020. The Life to the Full programme is based on ‘A Model Catholic RSE Curriculum’ by the Catholic Education Service which was highlighted as a work of good practice by the Department of Education. Therefore, we have confidence that the programme will be fit for purpose in supporting the growth and development of your child.

Life to the Full is much more than a series of lessons. It is an entire platform of creative resources that will engage, inform and inspire our children and, indeed, you as parents. This includes interactive video content, story-based activities, employing a wide range of teaching tools, original worship music and an accompanying programme of classroom prayers.

In addition, there is an online parent platform so that you, as parent and carers, can engage with the teaching and deepen the experience for your child. To access the online parent platform please visit: www.tentenresources.co.uk/parent-portal

Life to the Full is intended to be a partnership between home, school and church. We know that you already do a fantastic job and we see our new programme, Life to the Full, as a means to further develop, support and enrich the partnership between home, school and church so that your child is fully supported.

Programme Content

Module 1	Created and Loved by God
Units	Religious Understanding Me, My Body, My Health Emotional Well-Being Life Cycles
Module 2	Created to Love Others
Units	Religious Understanding Personal Relationship Keeping Safe
Module 3	Created to Live in Community
Units	Religious Understanding Living in the Wider World

The programme adopts a spiral curriculum approach so that as your child goes through the programme year-after-year, the learning will develop and grow, with each stage building on the last.

Module One: Created and Loved by God

Module One: Created and Loved by God explores the individual. Rooted in the teaching that we are made in the image and likeness of God, it helps children to develop an understanding of the importance of valuing themselves as the basis for personal relationships.

In these sessions, we explore:

Foundation Phase– that we are uniquely made by a loving God, that we have differences and similarities (including physical differences between boys and girls), key information about staying physically healthy, understanding feelings and emotions, including strong feelings such as anger, and the cycle of life from birth to old age.

Lower Key Stage Two – understanding differences, respecting our bodies, puberty and changing bodies (recommended for Year 4+), strategies to support emotional wellbeing including practicing thankfulness, and the development of pupils understanding of life before birth.

Upper Key Stage Two – appreciation of physical and emotional differences, a more complex understanding of physical changes in girls and boys’ bodies, body image, strong emotional feelings, the impact of the internet and social media on emotional well-being, a more nuanced and scientific understanding of life in the womb and how babies are made, and menstruation.

Module Two: Created to Love Others

Module Two: Created to Love Others explores the individual’s relationship with others. Building on the understanding that we have been created out of love and for love, this unit explores how we take this calling into our family, friendships and relationships, and teaches strategies for developing healthy relationships and keeping safe.

This religious understanding is then applied to real-world situations relevant to the age and stage of the children:

Foundation Phase– In the Unit  ‘Personal Relationships’, children are taught to identify the Special People in their lives who they love and can trust, how to cope with various social situations and dilemmas, and the importance of saying sorry and forgiveness within relationships. In the Unit ‘Keeping Safe’, we explore the risks of being online by incorporating the ‘Smartie the Penguin’ resources from Childnet, the difference between good and bad secrets, and teaching on physical boundaries (incorporating the PANTS resource the NSPCC).

Lower Key Stage Two – The sessions here help  children  to develop a more complex  appreciation  of  different  family structures and there are activities and strategies to help  them develop healthy relationships with family and friends;  here,  they are also taught simplified Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) techniques for managing thoughts, feelings and actions.

Once again, for the ‘Keeping Safe’ unit, there are some excellent NSPCC resources, as well as teaching on bullying and abuse through a series of animated stories.

Upper Key Stage Two – The sessions for UKS2 in the ‘Personal Relationships’ module aim to equip children with strategies for more complex experiences of relationships and conflict; this includes sessions that help children to identify and understand how to respond to spoken and unspoken pressure, the concept of consent and some practical demonstrations of this, and further teaching on how our thoughts and feelings have an impact on how we act.

Module Three: Created to Live in Community

Finally, Module Three: Created to Live in Community explores the individual’s relationship with the wider world.  Here we explore how human beings are relational by nature and are called to love others in the wider community through service, through dialogue and through working for the Common Good.

In the first Unit, Religious Understanding, the story sessions help children to develop a concept of the Trinity.

In subsequent sessions, we apply this religious understanding to real-world situations, such as the community we live in, and through exploring the work of charities which work for the Common Good.

An old Hebrew Prayer sums up the importance of why we teach relationships education at St. Patrick’s:

For each of us, life is like a journey.

Birth is the beginning of this journey, And death is not the end; but the destination.

It is a journey that takes us from youth to age, from innocence to awareness,

from ignorance to knowledge, from foolishness to wisdom, from weakness to strength and often back again,

from offence to forgiveness, from pain to compassion, from fear to faith

from defeat to victory and from victory to defeat,

Until, looking backward or ahead, we see that victory does not lie at some high point along the way, but in having made the journey, stage by stage.