GRADE:  SECOND

CURRICULUM SUPPORTS:  Language Arts; Social Studies; Math [scales and charts for self-report success]

LESSON FOCUS:  Critical thinking; ethical decision making

 

OVERVIEW:  Students learn how to be a team player by participating in organized team sports. 

Young students develop the morals in elementary years that they will use for decision making throughout life.

When you first start to ride a bicycle, you make mistakes and even fall a few times.  But soon you have developed the habit of balance and you make fewer mistakes.  Learning to solve problems takes practice, too.

It is important that young students learn to make wise choices that keep them safe and do no harm to others.

This lesson and its activities should be practiced over and over until students develop good choice-making habits.

 

MEASUREMENT OF SUCCESS: 

A.  Look for evidence of ideas utilized in good choice discussions in student work.

Keep a running tabulation of the evidence. 

B. Utilize your usual “warning” strategy as a way of documenting change / success from using these instructional strategies.  C.  Student self-report.  Use a “Values Clarification Scale with “0” as the low point “I am never a rule-keeper”, “5” = “half of the time I remember to be a rule-keeper/half of the time I don’t remember the rules”, “10” = “I am always a rule-keeper”.  After students are proficient/more sophisticated in their self-awareness, they can utilize “in between” numbers to delineate “on the way to” the next level on the scale.  Your students will need a visual cue.  Utilize whatever strategies you are teaching to keep an accounting of success.  If you are teaching mapping or charting, then use a scale to indicate success that supports what you are teaching in other subject areas.

 

ACTIVITY ONE: Discussion and Idea Lists.

Explain:  Sticking to what you believe is right is not easy.   Sometimes we give in and do things we know our parents will not like or the teacher will not like.  Some young people like to have power over others and try to convince us that it is “OK” to break rules.   We can end up doing something that is not good for us and may get us into trouble. 

 

Discuss:

1.      Who is your peer?  [Create a definition from student responses.] What is “peer pressure”?

2.      What are some ways that students get other students to be a rule-breaker? [Make a “good choice” list for permanent posting in the room.]

Examples:  Call others student bad names; threaten not to be our friends if we do not do what they want us to do; call us “chicken”; suggest that “everyone else” is doing something they want us to do

3.      Is there “good peer pressure”?  What do you think?  What about the students in our class who have read 25 books and earned a star?  Sometimes we are influenced in good ways by are peers [classmates; friends].  CAN YOU NAME SOME OTHER WAYS THAT PEER PRESSURE CAN BE “GOOD”?

4.      What are some “bad pressures”?  Being asked to steal; telling a lie; drinking alcohol [generate more ideas].

 

SAY:  WE CAN DEVELOP THE GOOD HABIT OF SAYING “NO” TO RULE BREAKING.  When we say no to peer pressure, this is called using “REFUSAL SKILLS”.

 

SITUATION:

When you go to a friend’s house, the friend suggests that the two of you take money that belongs to your Mom and go to the store and buy candy.

What can you do?

1.      Make an excuse.  “I can’t do that because my Mom is expecting me to be at your house or go home.” [get more ideas from students]

2.      Suggest a different thing to do.  “Let’s go outside and ______. “  “Let’s play that neat game of _____ you got for your birthday.”

3.      Say “No” and just go.  “I don’t do things like that.”  “I must go now.” Leave right away and refuse to discuss it.

 

 

ACTIVITY TWO:  Refusal Skill Practice.

Say:  Now we are going to practice “refusal skills”

Structure:  Student Pairs or

                Use the context of a “Class Meeting” with the whole group with students taking turns in student pairs.

Role Plays:

A.     Your friend wants you to let him see the answers on your test.

B.     You are playing at a friend’s house and tells you he knows where his brother has some cigarettes.

C.     You are on the playground and someone asks you to tell someone else bad gossip about their Mom.

D.     Students brainstorm ideas about problems in the classroom.

 

 

ACTIVITY THREE:  Values Clarification Scale.

Say:  We want our friends to like us.  Sometimes we must say “no” to our friends or else we might get into trouble.   We need to consider if some things are safe or healthy for us to do.  Some things may not be legal to do and we need to develop good habits of staying out of trouble.

Chart individually or hold a discussion:

Your counselor can give you a pre-made handout for this activity or copy and paste the following to WORD and then print it out.  Or make cards of the items below and create a “class value average” by assigning numbers instead of the words below.

Three point scale = A LOT * SOMETIMES * NEVER

 

 

 

 

 

To smoke

 

To steal

 

To try drugs

 

To say bad things about someone

 

To say bad words

 

To be nice only to popular people

 

To join in - ganging up on one person

 

To act “all that”

 

To help others cheat on tests

 

To write and pass notes in school

 

 

 

 

ACTIVITY THREE:  Create bookmarkers to reinforce the theme, “Saying No”; “Doing what is right”  “Be a rule-keeper and not a rule-breaker”, etc.  Students use the bookmarkers as reminders of the skills.

Or

Create a writing assignment to reinforce this lesson.

Or

Make posters to show other classes who walk by your room in the halls how much you know about refusal skills.

 

Perhaps the Art Teacher or the Librarian would like to participate in reinforcing this group of lessons in some way.

 

Invite the counselor into your classroom one time to reinforce refusal skills or to show a discussion video.  Then the students can “show off” their level of skills.

 

Adapted from:  “Learning for Life” [BSA]