Health Lesson Ideas

The first step is to break the class into 5 groups. There should be 4 or 5 people per group. Hand out a copy of the scenario to only the group that will be performing the role play for the class. Allow the students to have 5 to 10 minutes to come up with a skit of the scenario that you gave them. Each student should have a speaking role in the role play.

After each group performs their role play asks the rest of the students what they saw. What was the peer pressure? What was done to either give in or resist the peer pressure? Then ask them to give you other ways they could have resisted the peer pressure. In a lot of the cases students might just say that they could just walk away. Don’t let them get away with just saying that. Make them give you 4 or 5 other things that they could have done or have done. This will force them to get away from just saying walk away, which is a great strategy but in a lot of cases this is harder said than done. Try and get them to talk about what they would really do in this situation. If your best friend is stealing something you probably aren’t going to just walk away, but what would you really do?

Here are some scenarios that I came up with:

Scenario 1- A group of friends go to the mall and all of the friends but 1 wants to shoplift. The 1 friend needs to resist the peer pressure.

Scenario 2- A group of friends are at a party and someone offers you all alcohol. All but 2 of you instantly say yes but the others aren’t so sure but eventually they are convinced to drink as well.

Scenario 3- Your group of friends want to skip school and go to a movie but 2 of you don’t think you should go and decided to stay while your friends skip class.

Scenario 4- Your friends are making fun of a student in a wheelchair and are trying to get you to join in. (In this scenario you can choose to either join in or not, you decide)

Scenario 5- A group of friends are hanging out and 1 of them pulls out a cigarette and says that he/she wants to try smoking. He/she decided to try and get other people to join in. (In this scenario you can choose to either join in or not, you decide)