Lesson 2
Being Assertive
Lesson Concepts:
Students will be able to:
Learning to be assertive also has value for students who are being bullied or otherwise mistreated by peers. These students can use assertiveness as a tool to stand up for their rights. Likewise, students who either witness or know about bullying can use assertiveness skills to support the target or report the behavior to an adult. Finally, students need assertiveness skills to get help in school and to communicate respectfully with adults across a variety of situations.
Outline of our lesson:
Lesson Concepts:
- Being assertive means asking for what you need or want in a calm, firm, respectful voice.
- Being assertive helps you be successful in a variety of social and academic situations.
Students will be able to:
- Identify passive, aggressive, and assertive responses
- Demonstrate assertive responses with their classmates
Learning to be assertive also has value for students who are being bullied or otherwise mistreated by peers. These students can use assertiveness as a tool to stand up for their rights. Likewise, students who either witness or know about bullying can use assertiveness skills to support the target or report the behavior to an adult. Finally, students need assertiveness skills to get help in school and to communicate respectfully with adults across a variety of situations.
Outline of our lesson:
- I talked to the students about the different parts of out brain that are involved in self-regulation. I have some really great posters from Conscious Discipline that show these three different sections: brain stem, limbic system, and pre-frontal lobes. When I talked about the brain stem, I taught the students that this when the brain is asking: "Am I safe?" We talked about the behaviors they would show if they were in a room with a really mad tiger. They said they would freeze, run away, hide, or hit, kick, punch, etc. Absolutely that is what you should do! You should do anything to keep yourself safe. This is so great we have this part of our brain, it helps us survive in scary situations. However, the brain needs help in knowing the difference between a dangerous situation and something that happened at home or school where you're feeling very mad. In order to do this, we have to remind ourselves: "we are safe" and take big, deep breaths to shift our brains up to the limbic system. The limbic system is the emotional state of our brains, here our brains are asking if we are loved. The behaviors we display here include crying, arguing, yelling, name-calling, anything that is verbally aggressive. We can move from this part of our brain up to our pre-frontal lobes, which is where we want to be. We shift up to the pre-frontal lobe by taking big, deep breaths and giving us time to calm down. The pre-frontal lobes are the executive state of our brains. This is where we can problem-solve. When we are here, the brain is asking: "what can I learn from this?" This is when we can use our assertive/big voice to solve problems.
- We watched a short DVD clip of kids playing four square on the playground. There was an example of students using a passive voice, aggressive voice, and assertive voice. We discussed how using our assertive voice is the best. Using an assertive voice means: using your big voice in a calm, firm, and respectful way, standing up straight and tall, and looking the person in the eyes.
- The students practiced using their assertive voice with partners and using our Time Machine. The Time Machine is a conflict resolution tool, that helps students solve problems with one another in a respectful way.
- We read Shubert's Big Voice (Shubert shows us how he uses his big voice to stand up to Benny) and Shubert is a S.T.A.R (Shubert shows us how he calms down by doing the pretzel, balloon, drain, or S.T.A.R breathing in the Safe Spot in his classroom).
- Leadership Applications were discussed and handed out. They are due back to me by Thursday, September, 26th.