Digital Media-Week 2 Blog

I am on the health and fitness committee at school, so I looked for a segment that fit within this category. Since I serve mainly as a resource to homeschooling families, I wanted to find a segment that would fit any student between grades K-8. I also thought it would be neat to utilize it in our 8th grade "Grad TRAK" (HS prep) class. I found a wonderful 13 minute video (5 segments, 2-3 min. each) on stress entitled "Don't Pop Your Cork on Mondays."

http://player.discoveryeducation.com/index.cfm?guidAssetId=867EB4C0-E31B-4AC8-8C8E-2FA5D23E1289&blnFromSearch=1&productcode=US

The segments cover the following categories:
What causes stress?
How do people deal with it?
Stress reliever techniques

The goals for students would be to list stressful situations, understand what happens physically and mentally when under stress, and identify helpful and non-helpful ways to handle stress. I want them to be able to predict when a stressful situation may arise and role-play healthy ways to "deal." Ultimately, I want them to react in a helpful way whenever a stressful situation occurs and be able to reflect on their reactions to improve future responses.

As mentioned in Gardner's book, p. 35 "..most measures of standardized learning are of little use; they do not reveal whether the student can actually make use of the classroom material-the subject matter-once she steps outside the door." It will do no good for them to simply spew back the information learned about stress if they are unable to apply the learning to a future stressful situation. Therefore, my activities are varied and designed to help them utilize the knowledge learned in unique situations.

The 5 activities I would suggest:

To introduce concept-
1) Spend 3 minutes in a group (either siblings or class group) listing as many words as come to mind when thinking of the word "Stress". Only 1 word allowed on each line-no sentences or phrases. Read list aloud.

*Watch video segments 1 and 2*
2) Have students tell the teacher what situations may cause stress. List these situations then have a student pantomime ways that someone may deal with that particular stressful situation. Others in the group guess what the 'actor' is doing. Give a thumbs-up or down if it is a healthy way to deal with the stress.

*Watch video segments 3-5*
3) Identify people who have reacted in good or bad ways to stressful situations. Be prepared to defend why you think it was a helpful or unhelpful reaction. (Mrs. Tiger Woods' golf club incident comes to mind, but I'd let the students think of their own examples.) :)

4) Use an art form to show helpful and unhelpful ways of dealing with stress. Some examples:
*a collage with 2 sides: One side-cut out pictures of unhealthy ways (eating/yelling/hitting..)
and the other side cut out pictures that illustrate healthy ways (counting to 10, etc..)
*Write a poem or song
*Draw/sketch/use color to show the 2 sides

5) Role play a few upcoming stressful situations and personalize good ways to handle it. Write them out on note cards. Hang note cards in a prominent place. After the situation arises, debrief ways that students dealt with the stress and any new ideas or improvements that could be made.
(This would have been helpful for my family to have done before Jr. High shot day!)