Mad about this lesson plan?

Nabanita Deshmukh

“Stop fighting! Stop fighting!” shouted the teacher but the children kept punching each other and soon the entire class erupted into a frenzy. The agitated teacher, Shruti Varma, furiously walked out of the classroom but ended up feeling miserable afterwards.

“How to control students who are always angry and also calm myself down?” thought Shruti who herself struggled with anger and surprisingly she did come up with a plan, oh yes! It was a lesson plan that seemed to have worked! What did the teacher do?

Shruti read voraciously and began collecting stories on anger. She made sure that the length and language used in the tales were appropriate for her class (standard 7). Keeping a story in mind about a boy who learned how to control his temper and stand up to a bully, Shruti created a tiered lesson plan. Why tiered? It was because there were students of different abilities, tastes and learning styles in her English class. A tiered lesson usually takes care of these categories.

Shruti’s lesson plan had an interesting objective, a challenging process and a practical outcome.

Tiered Lesson Plan

Key concept: Anger

Objectives:
• To make students aware of anger and its consequences.
• To guide students to come up with steps to control it.
• To develop appropriate vocabulary to describe anger.
• To encourage students to represent anger through non-academic modes.

Whole class activity: Story on anger

• The teacher narrates a tale about anger and ensures that children have understood the story.
• Students retell the story in their own words either individually or in groups.
• Students share their impressions about the story.

Tier 1 Activity: Anger vocabulary

• Students read the story and get to know synonyms and phrases that represent anger.
• Students make a word web with the chosen words.
• Students write a paragraph on anger by using some of the words and expressions.

Tier 2 Activity: Anger drawing
Students express their ideas about anger through drawings and crafts.

Tier 3 Activity: Skit

• Students write dialogues or skits either based on the anger story or on any situation where people lose their temper.
• Students enact the skit before the class.

Outcome:

• Students’ awareness of anger gets enhanced through shared activities.
• Students find solutions to handle anger.
• Students’ vocabulary and LSRW skills improve by doing varied activities.
• Students learn to express their emotions such as anger in different ways.
• Most students participate in the activities due to the multilevelled organization.

Shruti now had a lesson plan on paper but to know its efficacy she had to try it out in class. The next day, printouts of the story about the boy and the bully were distributed to the students. Shruti made sure that everyone understood the story and assessed their retelling and paraphrasing skills. Once this was done, the children attempted the following exercises:

Language structures: Students had to find out the contextual meanings of certain terms related to anger by reading sentences from passages. There was a sentence, for example which read, ‘Ashwin’s father was livid when he saw him playing games on his mobile phone instead of studying and he slapped him.’ Most students, after doing the exercise guessed that ‘being livid’ meant getting very angry.

A few other words and phrases connected to anger were written on the board such as mad, cross, indignant, furious, fly into a rage, in a fit of anger, lose one’s temper, blow one’s top, go ballistic, to be up in arms, etc….Students created word webs and grammatical lists by using these terms.

Visualization and personification: Shruti also encouraged children to visualize anger and then personify it. Once this was done, students talked, wrote or drew what they had visualized. Shruti loved going through her students’ essays, watched a skit on anger they put up and admired their illustrations depicting anger as a dangerous person. These activities became a hit both in terms of imagination and language acquisition.

Self-awareness: Shruti later asked her students how often they got angry and whether they knew they were actually losing their tempers, and if yes what were the signs? The students responded by saying:
• ‘My ears become hot, ma’am.’
• ‘I tap my fingers on the desk.’
• ‘I fidget.’
• ‘I cry.’
• ‘I want to run away from home.’
• ‘I can’t concentrate.’

Observation: Once the tell-tale signs of anger were mentioned, Shruti gave her students an interesting homework. Each one had to note down their behaviour for one whole week on how they lost their tempers and the way they felt afterwards. Some of the observations were as follows:
• ‘I punched my younger brother.’
• ‘I was rude to my parents.’
• ‘I ran out of the house and played cricket.’
• ‘I scribbled on my elder sister’s book and tore a few pages.’

Most students said that they hated losing their tempers because it caused pain to their friends or family members and this in turn upset them. “So what do you think you can do to control your anger?” asked Shruti inquisitively. The children thought for some time and came up with these answers:
• ‘I’ll play more games.’
• ‘I’ll talk it out.’
• ‘I’ll draw or cultivate a hobby.’
• ‘I’ll shout out what is bothering me.’
• ‘I’ll go to sleep.’
• ‘I’ll write down the things that are bothering me.’

Anger-coping tips: Shruti, after getting the students’ reactions and ideas, came up with her own list of practical tips on how to control one’s temper and here it is:

• Put your hands in your pockets and count to 10 before hitting your friend (from the story).
• Step back and imagine your anger as a cloud floating away.
• Play some sport (running, outdoor games, cycling, etc…) to channelize aggressive energy.
• Express your angry thoughts by writing them all down on a piece of paper and then tear it up or throw it into a bin or bucket of water. Paper tends to disintegrate in water and so will anger.
• Leave the room if you cannot control aggression.

The lesson finally got over and what a change there was! The children gradually stopped fighting in class and became friendlier towards Shruti as well. ‘Lose your ego but not your temper!’ is Shruti’s current motto, and did I tell you, Shruti herself rarely gets angry these days!

The author is a teacher, teacher educator and writer of children’s stories and poems. She can be reached at deshmukh.nitu@gmail.com.