lesson plan

Lesson Plan on Self Control in Students

Self-control refers to the ability to properly manage one’s impulses, feelings, and thoughts once faced with a challenging situation such that they do the right thing whether one is willing to do so or not (Character Building and Social Emotional Learning, 2020). Teaching self-control to students at a young age is important as it allows them to handle situations correctly and also avoid trouble because of instantly reacting to situations. Self-control aims at enhancing critical thinking before one takes an action, control of one’s temper, respecting other people’s properties, and building healthy habits. In line with these objectives, this lesson plan will discuss how self-control can be taught to students using a common scenario that happens in everyday school life.

The students will be presented with the following scenario and they will be required to suggest how they would have best handled this situation: “you have been transferred to a new school because your parents were transferred to a different state for work. In this new school, you easily make friends and you do not feel left out because most students are friendly. In the third week of school, however, you notice that some two older students in your class started picking on you. They started this as a joke but were soon conducting pranks on you which made you really embarrassed. You told these boys to stop but they would not listen to you. You then reported the matter to the teacher and the picking stopped. However, after a while, these students seemed to upgrade their game. They started stealing your books before lessons such that you got in trouble with teachers. They also started calling you names during break periods and they told you that there is nowhere you can take them. This behavior towards you has been disturbing you a lot and anger started building in you such that you wanted revenge. Furthermore, your friends have been encouraging you to get back your revenge since the administration's way will take longer. Most students have also always gotten away with fighting and stealing students’ valuables, an option that has been in your mind. Discuss how you will best handle this situation.

This activity is aimed at promoting four issues associated with self-control, that is, thinking before acting, controlling one’s temper, respecting other people’s properties, and respecting school rules. Allowing the students to discuss will help them achieve good critical thinking skills. Whereas fighting might bring them justice, the students will be expected to reason that such fights might land them in problems and this might call for detention. Through this thinking, they will also manage to understand why certain actions cannot be taken into their own hands. If the students still suggest that they will report the matter to the administration, they will meet the objective of controlling one’s temper which is part and parcel of self-control. This is because they have the understanding that the administrative way will take longer but they will have to remain patient to get justice.

Self-control also dictates that people should respect others’ properties. While it is true that in the case study the victim’s books have been stolen to an extent that she has gotten in trouble with her teachers, stealing the books of the bullying students is not right. Although this might seem like the most effective way of getting revenge, the students should be able to reason that wrong cannot be corrected with another wrong. Therefore, even though the other students are in the wrong, the victim should not think of stealing their books too to get equal. Self-control also means that students must respect school rules. In the provided case study, any suggestions to fight will be rejected because this will mean that the student will break school rules that prohibit fighting. Instead, the students will be expected to state that the victim will report the matter to the teacher again and avoid situations that might provoke them to fight. This will greatly improve their self-control.

References

Character Building and Social Emotional Learning (2020). Self-Control Lesson Plan.