Session 11:  Review Lesson/Magazine

 

Goals:

·        To review conflict resolution theory that was explored in previous lessons.

·        To discuss how rumors work.

·        To allow the students to create magazine entries that will eventually be published for them

 

Materials Needed

à        Notecards for Introduction Activity

à        Writing sheet for magazine entries

 

Methods:

I.  Review Activity

II.  Peace by PEACE Magazine

 

I.          Review Activity

a.       Communications Review

                                                               i.      Distribute the notecards to each student. 

                                                             ii.      The notecards should have a picture on one side and a word on the other side.  Have the students look at the picture side of the notecard.

                                                            iii.      The objective of this game is to find someone who has the same picture.  Give the students two to three minutes to complete this task.

                                                           iv.      Rules of the Game:

1.      Do not show your card to anyone!

2.      No talking allowed.

                                                             v.      When time is up, have the students compare cards.  Some students will not have been able to locate their partner, so help them pair off now.

                                                           vi.      Discussion:

1.      What was hard about this activity?  How did you solve the problem of not being able to communicate verbally? 

                                                          vii.      Review some of the concepts of Communication from Session 4.  What is communication?  How do people communicate with each other?  What are some non-verbal forms of communication?  How do people from different cultures communicate?  What are some problems that can arise from lack of communication?  Why is communication important in conflict resolution? 

b.      Conflict Escalation/Descalation Review

                                                               i.      The students should remain in the same pairs from the previous activity.  Have the students look at the other side of the card.  Each card should have a word written on this side of the card.  The word may be an escalator or a deescalator.  Briefly review the definitions of conflict, escalator, and deescalator. 

                                                             ii.      One student in each pair should have an escalator card, while the other student should have a deescalator card.  Each pair should then work together to decide which is the escalator and which is the deescalator.  They should be able to explain why. 

                                                            iii.      Then they need to create a scenario which escalates and then deescalates using the escalator and deescalator on the cards.

                                                           iv.      Presentation:  This will depend upon your class size, behavior of your class, time, and your own discretion.  Some ideas:

1.      Ask all the students with escalator cards to stand up.  Go around the room and have them read off what is on their cards.  Do the same for deescalators.  Ask a few students to share why the word on their card is an escalator or deescalator.  How does it help make a conflict better or worst?

2.      Role play.  Ask for volunteers to role play their scenario.  Have them describe a conflict and how the escalator made the conflict work.  Then have the students role play to deescalate the conflict and have the class guess what deescalator was used.  The students could also just role play all the way through.  Discuss the conflict and its dynamics.  What was the conflict?  Did their escalator lead to more escalators?  How did it escalate the conflict?  How did they resolve the conflict?  Are there any other ways that they could have resolved the conflict? 

 

 

I.                   Telephone

Play the game of telephone by whispering about a conflict situation into one student’s ear and having them pass the details about the situation from student to student.  At the end, have the last student repeat the situation.  Talk about how rumors work like this, show how muddled a story can become after it has been passed all around, and discuss how this can make a conflict worse.

 

II.                Peace by PEACE Magazine

Explain to the students that they are going to create a real magazine.  Tell them that it will have entries from all of the Peace by PEACE students from all the different schools and classes where Peace lessons are taught.  Explain to them that they don’t have to write anything, but that we would really like them to contribute their thoughts.  Remind them that this will be published, so if they write something too personal or something about someone else in the class, other students will see it.   Hand out the magazine sheets (see appendix) and blank paper in case students also want to contribute some artwork.