Key Messages

  • Positive respectful relationships consist of many characteristics.
  • Respect, communication, mutuality, and consent are important for a safe and healthy relationship.

Learning Intention

Students will: Explore diverse types of relationships and investigate the prerequisites for a healthy relationship identifying similarities and differences within groups.

Time

20 Minutes
+ 20 Minute Extension

Required Resources

  • Paper
  • Marker pens
  • Blu-tack
    Or
  • Word cloud creator
  • Extension – graphic and template provided to print or display.
Download Required Resources

Success criteria

Students will be able to:

  • Identify common characteristics in respectful relationships and the rights and responsibilities everyone has within relationships.

Teaching Notes

Relationships are central to our lives. Each relationship is different because each person is different. It is important that students learn to distinguish behaviour relating to healthy or respectful relationships
and to differentiate healthy, respectful relationships from unhealthy.

This activity is a good way to get the students thinking about what traits they value and expect in their relationships, and what these characteristics might look like in a relationship.

Sexual Health Victoria advocates that the following characteristics must be present in any healthy relationship:

  • Consent
  • Communication
  • Mutuality
  • Respect.

Lack of, or imbalance of these characteristics could mean that a relationship in unhealthy. Be sure to include many types of relationship in discussion.

Procedure

  1. Students work in small groups of about four to five.
  2. Students brainstorm all the traits they expect to find in a healthy relationship and write these down. E.g. respect, communication, love, etc.
  3. Groups then circle their top five traits. They must all agree on these traits as a group.
  4. Each group can then display their paper at the front of the room so the class can see their responses.
  5. As a class collate the top five traits required in a healthy relationship.
  6. Groups can then list the types of behaviours that would demonstrate the top 5 traits. Compare suggested behaviours as a class, expand the list if necessary.

Alternatively, students can provide their list to be added to a word cloud creator. This would provide a visual representation of which characteristics were most often identified by students.

Extension

  1. Display the graphic below and lead discussion around if the indicated qualities line up with their understanding of what respect is.
  2. Ask students to identify behaviours which indicate respect in a relationship.
  3. Use blank template to brainstorm qualities/ behaviours which represent each of the 5 top traits as identified by class.

Questioning

  • How did your group select their top five traits required for a healthy relationship?
  • Could a relationship be healthy without any of your identified characteristics?
  • Was it easy to agree or did you have different expectations?
  • Which of these traits would you consider to be a ‘deal breaker’ if they were missing from a relationship? Explain.
  • How could you assess if your partner had the traits that you deem to be important?
  • How could these characteristics be demonstrated within a respectful relationship? (What would you expect to see?)

References

Adapted from: Relationship Things Resource Kit (YMCA, 2008)

Curriculum Information