Sexuality Education - Part 2

At the end of last term/ beginning of this term, we completed our unit on Sexuality Education. Our last lessons focused on Keeping Ourselves Safe, and Making Good Decisions. 

Keeping Ourselves Safe
Aim: to identify people, places and things which threaten our safety and to give opportunities for the students to develop strategies to keep themselves safe.

During literacy time, the students read and discussed various scenarios in pairs. They took notes in their writing books. Here are a couple of the scenarios we looked at.

• You're in the shopping centre with your big brother/sister. You stop to look at books on a bookstand outside a shop. When you stop browsing and look around your brother/sister is out of sight. You're lost. What are you going to do?
  
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• • You are on a school outing to ... with your teacher and class. It's a very interesting place and there are many other school tours there that day. You are fascinated by the ... and you could look at it/them all day long. Suddenly you stop day-dreaming and look around for your group. There are children and adults everywhere. You know nobody. Your teacher and class have vanished. What do you do?  

During our whole class discussion several students talked about their own experiences in situations like these. Others also shared advice you had given them for what to do in such situations. We expanded these ideas, talked about how its important to ask for help and listed good choices. Our list included police, security guards, people at the information desk, people at the counters in shops, and families with young children.

Respect and Consent
This youtube clip helped us understand what it means to respect other people's bodies and personal space. The students were able to watch it at their own pace on our chromebooks.

Keep Your Hands to Yourself

This clip helped us understand what consent means.

Consent for Kids

Making Decisions
Finally, we discussed factors that can influence personal decisions. The children worked in pairs to look at different scenarios. They selected from a variety of answers and discussed the reason for their choice. I emphasised there could be many 'right' answers. The purpose of this exercise is to give children confidence they are capable of solving age-appropriate problems. When we talked as class, they impressed me with their reasoning, and acceptance of different viewpoints. Some great critical thinking!