Good Day Everyone

Hope everyone is keeping dry!

This term we started with our first 2 groups for the In Real Life Program for all our year 5 students. It is an interactive program designed to assist students to build their friendship skills and social wellbeing. It is run in small groups of 8 (1 boys and 1 girls group) and goes for 45 minutes a week over 8 weeks.

In the first sessions we covered how friendships are going for each student, challenges students might face, and how to deal with conflict in friendship groups. The students are learning about different ways to deal with friendship issues in a healthy way.

In discussions among the students, they shared some unhealthy conflict resolution happening in their year group. Unhealthy practices they identified were gossiping, negative online group chats with individuals targeted, name calling and pre-arranged physical fights among the boys. These can all influence an individual negatively and cause mental health issues if not resolved.

The In Real Life Program teach students how to resolve conflict and friendship issues in a confident and healthy way. This takes practise and time, and students are given opportunities to role play and talk it out in their groups.

The model the In Real Life Program use have 5 steps:

Important to remember -Keep the issue only between you and the person involved

1. Talk it out with the person in a calm way
2. Two sides to the story, listen to their part of the story
3. The main Issue, how did the issue start?
4. What can we do? Things we can do differently to move forward with the friendship
5. Get back on track, say sorry, forgive and let it go

We want to grow our friendships and mature together so one day we will have great friendships and relationships. How important is it to have friends you can trust, who support you and have your back?

“Conflict isn’t the end of a friendship but a chance for it to GROW!”

Take Care