Third Grade: Being Assertive

This week, we learn our fourth and final Skill for Learning: being assertive. We started out the lesson with a quick review of the Skills for Learning we had learned in previous weeks: listen, focus attention, and use self-talk. Students shared examples of how they had used self-talk in the last week to help them be successful. Next, we did a Brain Builder called the Doodle Dance, where I show students different doodles that have corresponding dance moves. The biggest rule in the doodle dance is that all dance moves must be done in reverse order, and the game is a silent game. Students must focus on me to know when to switch dance moves and also to know the order in which they were held up. Many students use self-talk to remind themselves which dance move goes with each doodle.

We spent the rest of the time discussing a girl named Naomi, who arrived to school late. Her teacher had already divided up the class to start working on a project, and when she arrives she doesn't have a group to join. We talked about what Naomi wants or needs (to join a group), and how she is feeling (sad, confused, nervous, disappointed). Next, I modeled three different ways to ask for help and had students describe how my voice sounded, my word choice, and my body language for each way I asked for help.

1. Passive -- not making eye contact, speaking quietly, lack of confidence
2. Aggressive -- too confident, making eye contact but not using respectful words
3. Assertive -- calm, firm, respectful, making eye contact and standing tall

We talked about the problems you can have when asking for help passively (people may not know what you need to help you) and aggressively (people will not want to help you). We ended the lesson by having students practice asking their partners for help assertively.