Wellbeing Role Play Activities
A year 5 class I recently worked in were given scenarios to solve and role play.
For example:
You are all playing tiggy outside when Harold begins accusing everyone of cheating and gets visibly upset. What should you do?
First. of. all.
I love this idea - giving students very common incidents and asking them to problem solve. They tune into life skills like respect, communication and empathy.
Second, they all had VERY SOLID solutions! Suggestions included:
- saying sorry, asking if Harold was alright
- asking what rules Harold wanted to play by
- changing some rules so that Harold also feels included
While students were acting out scenes, the teacher whispered to me “Their solutions are fantastic, but these situations happen all the time and I’ve never sees them actually do this in real life”.
So afterwards she asked the class:
“Have you seen situations like Harold’s before?”
Every kid nodded.
“Have you ever seen someone solve this problem like how you suggested?”
No one nodded.
The problem
So the kids KNOW what’s right and what’s wrong. The healthy, respectful strategies are in their noggin, but they just don’t practice it.
WHY?
Well, role-playing is just ‘fun’. It’s not real, there’s nothing at stake like reputation and being left out.
Kids don’t speak up because of the herd mentality. If the group doesn’t speak up, then they also won’t, because of course they just want to fit in.
SOLUTIONS?
It’s about picking up when students bully or act rudely towards each other (in real time) and correcting it. It’s making sure staff praise students when they are brave and do the right thing (to make it the norm to respect each other), and to discuss real incidents like the one above frequently in class.
Most importantly, to nip it in the bud and teach boundaries, values and self-worth early on. If students can work on this, then the by-products of bullying naturally degrade.
