a presentation that includes the key facts about marriage, including cultural perspectives on marriage (for example, arranged marriages). Explain how marriages are celebrated differently in accordance with people’s beliefs and give examples.
Explain that healthy marriages are characterised by love, trust, respect, openness, kindness, empathy and support. Alternatively, ask the students to identify the characteristics of a healthy marriage. Are there any other characteristics?
Ask the students to identify the characteristics of an unhealthy marriage.
Give the students a card-sorting activity and ask them to sort descriptions of marriages into either ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’ marriages.
Go through the activity as a class.
Explain that sometimes people are exposed to risks within marriage. Give an example of what might constitute risky behaviour within a marriage.
Place three cards on the wall in separate corners of the classroom with the labels ‘risky’, ‘not risky’ and ‘some risk’. Read out a description of a marriage and ask the students to stand next to the appropriate card by moving to a corner of the room. Repeat with different scenarios. Provide students with an opportunity to say why they have chosen to stand next to a specific card and invite students to share different opinions.
Lesson 4
In this lesson the students will learn about the characteristics of successful parenting.
Provide the students with nine statements to illustrate the characteristics of successful parenting. These are listed below:
–providing food;
–providing clothing;
–providing a home;
–instilling positive character traits;
–providing love;
–protecting children from harm;
–helping their child to become independent;
–helping their child to feel confident;
–ensuring access to education.
Ask the students to arrange the statements into a diamond nine arrangement to show levels of importance.
Go through the activity with the class, providing the students with an opportunity to move statements from one place to another in the diamond nine arrangement.
Lesson 5
In this lesson the students will learn how to evaluate relationships within families, friendships and intimate relationships, and the importance of consent.
Explain to the students about the characteristics of safe families, safe friendships and safe intimate relationships.
Explain the importance of consent within relationships. Explain that in this unit, consent within intimate relationships will not be covered because this is addressed in a separate unit.
Provide the students with a definition of consent.
Discuss the factors that can affect a person’s capacity to provide consent. Examples include consuming alcohol or drugs, being subjected to threats, or having low self esteem or disabilities.
Read out the following scenario:
Simon and Ryan were both aged 15. They were friends. Simon wanted Ryan to break into a garage to steal a bicycle. At first Ryan refused. Simon persuaded Ryan to drink some alcohol to give him some courage to carry out the break in. Eventually Ryan agreed to carry out the crime.
Ask the students to discuss in pairs whether Ryan had given his consent to break into the garage.
Explain to the students that although Ryan agreed to break into the garage, his capacity to give consent was impaired by the alcohol. This is an example of coercion within a relationship.
Provide the students with a range of scenarios. Ask them to decide whether consent was given for the specific actions described in each scenario. The focus should be on consent within friendships and families rather than in intimate relationships.
Go through each of the scenarios and ask the students to justify their decisions.
Lesson 6
In this lesson the students will learn how to support others who are exposed to unsafe relationships.
Remind the students about the characteristics of healthy and unhealthy relationships.
In this lesson the students will respond to fictitious letters that people have written to a problem page in a magazine.
They will be asked to read a letter and discuss it with a partner. Each partner will have a different letter but both students should be given an opportunity to discuss their letter with their partner.
The students will then compose a letter as a reply to the problem. They will provide clear advice to help the person to resolve the problem.
At the end of the lesson the teacher will read out some of the responses that the students have generated.
CASE STUDY
A WHOLE-SCHOOL APPROACH TO LGBT INCLUSION
YEAR 7, CROSS-CURRICULAR
A secondary school planned to roll out a whole-school approach to LGBT inclusion. The school was a faith school and the decision to implement the whole-school approach was in response to recent incidents of homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying.
The bulk of the curriculum work would take place in Year 7. School leaders initially developed a policy in partnership with parents to address LGBT inclusion. A gender-neutral uniform was immediately introduced and changes were made to the physical infrastructure of the school. All the toilets were converted into gender-neutral toilets with separate cubicles and dividing walls that went from
