Module Three - Making Decisions

• decision making, choices, conflict, conflict resolution

Students will know that:

• all people make decisions.
• decisions are made in various ways and serve various purposes.
• some decisions lead to change.

Students will:

• identify and practice effective decision making techniques.
• identify and practice peaceful conflict resolution techniques.
• make connections between decisions and their consequences.

Students will:

• appreciate effective decision making processes.

Students may:

• participate in decision making situations.

• Discuss the various ways decisions are made in the classroom.
• Relate classroom decisions to the ways decisions are made at home. Ask the students:
  "Who decides what you're going to wear for the day?"
  "Who decides what you'll take in your lunch?"
  Ask about other things like going out for supper, getting a birthday gift, bedtime, and what school to attend.
• Talk about leadership - when adults assume the role and when children may assume it.
• Role play making decisions in the classroom and the home. Use a variety of situations.
• Discuss how students in class sometimes have disagreements or fights and how these are resolved. Compare to conflict between siblings.
• Use resources that depict sibling rivalry or siblings disagreeing. Role play various scenarios to establish peaceful ways to resolve these conflicts.
• Explore consequences of behaviour. Mae an If - Then book.
• Use drama in context to explore conflict in the classroom and in families, guiding students to use appropriate words and actions*.
• Model the use of a `decision-making tree'. Sketch a tree with two limbs on the board. Print a rule or decision to be made on the trunk. Label one limb `yes' and the other `no'. Make branches on each limb and record possible consequences of each decision. Use issues that are relevant to your students.
• Have students design their own decision making tree to establish a personal commitment or goal. Have them identify a special rule or decision they think is important. Record possible consequences on the two limbs. Students may enter the rule or decision on a template and evaluate themselves on their progress at regular intervals.

Module 3: Activity Guide

Discuss siblings and sibling rivalry as a natural part of living in a family. Discuss appropriate ways of handling related feelings.

Read a book that depicts sibling rivalry or siblings fighting. Discuss conflict.

Role play the following situations and/or others to develop understandings about sibling relationships and other concepts such as privacy and respect for the property of others. Students may role play the negative scenario and then a positive scenario.

Role play disagreements about:

• who will sit in the front seat of the car;
• which television show to watch;
• kicking under the table;
• who will get the window seat of the car;
• who will get the prize from the cereal;
• sharing a chocolate bar;
• going into a sibling's bedroom; and
• taking something that belongs to a sibling.

Consequences of behaviours and decisions

To explore consequences of behaviour, make an If - Then book explaining the consequences of a variety of actions that are part the daily lives of the children. Have each child draw a picture showing the consequence of actions that you have identified as a group. Compile the pages into a book.

Use stories or poems to initiate drama in context.

Present the following "What if ...?" situations and invite students to act out endings. In each case guide students in exploring feelings in a way that will enable them to develop empathy.

• What if two children were playing and a third child came up and asked if she could play too? (Explore various outcomes).
• What if dad and older sister were getting ready to go to the hockey game and the younger brother wanted to go along? (Explore various situations for example the younger brother has to stay home but he will do something special with mother, the older sister is having a special time with dad and the younger brother will have a special time with dad by himself.)
• What if your mom was transferred and you had to move out of your community?
• What if you were a new student? When you asked to play ball with two other children, they said, "Go away!" and made a face.
• What if the other children would not hold your hand when you played games in the gym?

Explore issues such as bullying, vandalism, skipping school, preventing abuse, personal safety and privacy, and safety in the school. Choose issues that are relevant to the students and to your community.

Conflict resolution

Discuss conflict resolution in terms of the classroom family. Make connections between skills they are learning in school to deal with conflict and dealing with conflict in families. Discuss reasons why physical violence is not appropriate.

Use drama in context to explore conflict in families, guiding students to use appropriate words and actions as the drama unfolds. Discuss how conflict may arise in families when there is not enough money to meet all the needs and wants of the family. Consider that family members may have different wants and this may lead to conflict. Show how real life problems often have more than one solution.

Note: The teacher will need to be sensitive to the kinds of conflict the children may describe. If the conflict appears to be overt, it may indicate some serious problems. The teacher will need to use her/his professional judgement as to how this is dealt with in class or outside of class. If, on the other hand, the children appear to get carried away in embellishing stories, hypothetical situations may be used.

The following scenarios and others may be incorporated in the drama in context:

• You are in the middle of your favourite television show. Your brother comes in and changes the channel. He wants to watch the hockey game.
• You like to borrow books from the school library. Every library day you bring your library books home and put them away carefully in your bedroom. Your younger brother always comes and takes the books. He likes to look at them too but he never puts them away. On library day you are always running around looking for the books and your mother is mad because you might miss the school bus.
• The family returns home and discovers that someone has been in the house. Someone had forgotten to lock the door before they left. Mother and father start to argue and get into a big fight. How do the kids feel? What can the kids do?
• Myron was told to be home at 8:00. He had been playing ball and was having a great time. He forgot all about the time. When he got home some time later his parents were really mad.

If family members live in harmony Then they will prosper.

How is this saying relevant today?

Read or tell stories such as Nobody or The Three Wishes. Identify conflict situations in the story. Discuss how the characters might have responded differently. Identify positive outcomes of conflict. Use the first eleven pages of Peacetimes to develop understandings about peace and conflict resolution.

Problem solving

Identify a problem and work through a problem solving process to elp students understand how they can affect change in their lives. Use one of the following problems, or one that is occurring in the lives of your students.

• The grade twos are always on the slide and the grade ones never get a chance to go on the slide.
• Some of the older students are pushing and teasing the younger ones.

Nathan lives on a farm. He loves to play in the yard and spends a lot of time out there. Every time he comes into the house he leaves the door open. The mice that are living in the nearby field are looking for a nice place to spend the winter. Whenever they can they try to get into the house through the open door. Nathan's mother does not want to share her house with the mice.

Susan likes to sit in her dad's car when it is parked on the driveway and pretend she is driving. She pretends to turn the steering wheel and she pokes at knobs. She doesn't honk the horn, even though she really wants to, because then dad will know that she is in the car. One day as she was pretending she was on a long trip she knocked something and the car started to roll backwards down the driveway.

Marilyn's home is close to a river. That river floods quite often in the spring so a big bank of dirt, a dyke, was built along the side of the river so that it wouldn't flood the neighbourhood. Marilyn and her friends sometimes play on the dyke. They climb to the top and slide down. Sometimes they get on top of the dyke and play "King of the Castle".

The family is returning home from a New Year's Celebration on a neighbouring reserve. The car stalls. It is an extremely cold night. Father goes for help. He has been gone a long, long, time. The children are cold and tired of waiting in the car and are wondering what to do.

John lives in a small community along the shore of a river. It is spring and he and his friends like to play along the shore. The air is warm and the ice is melting. John throws a ball and it rolls onto the ice.

Relate the problems and the problem solving skills to issues that are relevant to the students.