Year 7–8 Healthy Relationships

Teacher Note: These activities have been inspired by the University of Melbourne Indigenous Knowledge Institute resources, available here.

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Overview

Students will engage with a traditional story based on the stars in the night sky and learn about appropriate and inappropriate behaviours and relationships. 

For the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, their story of ‘Seven ​​​​Sisters’ is still shared in various parts of Australia today.  This story from the Great Victoria Desert tells of a man (Nyeeruna) who chases the Seven Sisters (Yugarilya) even though they do not consent to it.  The eldest sister (Kambugudha) protects her Seven Sisters (Yugarilya).  Some behaviours are clearly appropriate and in-appropriate.  However, some are ambiguous behaviours and will require students’ critical thinking skills. 

4Cs Curriculum Connections for CLIL

CONTENT

This resource addresses the following Content Descriptions from the Victorian Curriculum:
Health and Physical Education

  • Plan and implement strategies for connectig to natural and built environments to promote the health and wellbeing of their communities (VCHPEP131) 
  • Investigate the benefits of relationships and examine their impact on their own and others’ health and wellbeing (VCHPEP127)
  • Analyse factors that influence emotions, and develop strategies to demonstrate empathy and sensitivity (VCHPEP128)

COGNITION

  • Use graphic organisers to connect new learning to prior knowledge and analyse.
  • Reflect on own attitudes to relationships 

CULTURE

  • Reflect on own cultural understandings about attitudes to relationships.
  • Identify similiarities and differences in attitudes to relationships across cultures.

COMMUNICATION

Language Of Learning　

  • Language of healthy relationships: いいです、だめです、ときどきいいです、ときどきだめです 
  • Language from the Seven Sisters story: かんけい、まもります、おいかけます​、たすけます、おこります、なげます、おうえんします​

Language For Learning

  • Verbs from the Seven Sisters story for role playing (Activity 3)
  • Language for asking opinions/reflecting eg. どうして？

Language Through Learning

  • (This is the unplanned language students discover through their learning)

Teaching and Learning Activities

Display images of the Seven Sisters artworks available on the Japingka Aboriginal Art site.

Use the powerpoint resource to:

  • Introduce the Seven Sisters story, identifying the place and people this story belongs to.
  • Read the story in Japanese, referring to images to support understanding
  • Provide students with a choice of activities to apply their understandings from the story (role play, draw, story sequence, create a game)
  • Reflect on the learnings

Resources

Powerpoint

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Curricula (Aboriginal astronomy and appropriate relationships)

This work is licensed under a 
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This resource embodies traditional knowledge and traditional cultural expressions shared by Australian Indigenous communities. The information is shared for the purposes of knowledge preservation and general education, and ask that you engage with opportunities to learn from this knowledge and culture respectfully. In drawing on the material, users should consider the relevance and suitability to their particular circumstances and purposes. For more information, and to learn more about Australian Indigenous Knowledge, please visit Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander School Curricula