This is a wonderful, simple role play for aggressive/assertive/passive
responses to teasing which you might adapt or find a use for. It's
very simple. It was created by a man named Bill Eyman who works with
the Rhode Island Dept. of Ed: his job is to create community in schools!
Anyway, the role play goes like this.
First I model for the students
three responses to teasing: aggressive, passive, and assertive. I
do this by pretending I am a kid and asking for a volunteer to tease me
about my homework. My aggressive response has an angry face and a
clenched fist and my words put the teasing student down directly.
My passive response has a sad face, slumped body, and my words accept the
teasing as "probably right," but then I move to student in the audience
and talk about the teasing student in unfavorable terms, such as, "You
know Jessica? Well, don't you think she's not very nice? I
mean, you know, she's not any fun either, don't you think?" This
is the most complicated response because I'm trying to show the kids that
talking behind someone's back is a way of not dealing w/ the person directly
and it creates problems rather than solves them. The assertive response
has open arms signifying open heart and mind, eye contact w/ the teaser,
and in my words I stand up for myself without putting the other person
down: "I did the best I could on my homework and I'm proud of it.
If you think I could do better then next time why don't you help me?"
or something of the sort. Then I circulate around the room and pretend
to tease kids about homework and their job is to give an assertive response.
During this I do a lot of fine tuning because often kids will use assertive,
respectful language with a hostile tone; I fine tune the tone and sometimes
the words. This is a great little role play and it can be done in
about ten minutes; do it once a week in a classroom and you'll find kids
gradually learning to be assertive.