For our final lesson in this rotation, we focused on being assertive: asking for what you want or need in a calm, firm, respectful way. We started our lesson by watching "Walk, Walk, Walk" and having students listen for attention for how many times they heard the phrase "recognize those feelings." Once we had engaged our listening skills, we moved into a group activity where students took turns with their partners being a sculptor and being the clay.
I asked partners to sculpt their clay into an aggressive pose. Sculptors were given 30 seconds to sculpt their clay (the other partner), and once I said to "freeze!" we analyzed the different poses we saw. We talked about some of the students with angry faces, hands on their hips, fists clenched, and other intense poses. Next, we had our sculptor and clay switch roles. Partners were instructed to sculpt the clay into a passive pose. We looked at the different poses that had been created and discussed what parts of the poses represented being passive: many of these were students shaped into positions of being unsure of themselves, not making eye contact, etc. For both of the poses we talked about how we would feel if someone made that posture toward us and if this was an effective way to get what we wanted our needed.
For the remainder of the lesson we discussed a video clip regarding three students working on a group project. We talked about what a particular student wanted or needed from the situation and how we could tell. We also talked about how that student needed to tell the other student assertively what she wanted or needed, and what her voice, her words, and what the body language should look and sound like.
Here is the link to this lesson's prezi:
http://prezi.com/yros_vkgyksu/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy
