Session 5:

Making our choices

Session overview

Session Four introduced the notion that reasonable people can sometimes act badly, while people with ill intent can appear to work in our best interests. These ideas offer a valuable lens to examine how pressure, change and transition can contribute to a growing sense of vulnerability, leading people to behave in ways they may not ordinarily. It's essential for pupils to sufficiently understand this to muster the strength to choose their behaviour and recognise when others are attempting to influence them towards choices they perhaps should not take. Session Five considers this from the perspective of the characters in Kwan's story. Unaware of their vulnerability and the likely consequences of their poor decisions, the story shows how one poor decision can lead to another. Kwan reacts to how Ella treats him, encouraged to 'get back at her' by Hannah, an online 'friend'. This scenario also allows one to explore how online environments can influence or change a person's behaviour. However, the overriding message is that we should all choose to act in a way consistent with who we are, regardless of the context.

A. Session aims & objectives

Encourage more positivity online.
Help pupils ensure that they regulate their behaviour and that their actions remain consistent, whether online or offline.

B. Learning outcomes

I know I have a responsibility to act positively online.
I know agencies exist to protect me, particularly when I am online.

C. Terminology introduced

Example definitions of key terminology are included but, wherever possible, use pupils' own agreed descriptions, as per previous sessions.

BYSTANDER: A person who is present at an event or incident but does not take part

D. Resources required

❏ Kwan's story comic

❏ Slide pack for Session Five

(note: some activity slides are blank for you to make use of as you wish)

1. Session title

2. Learning outcomes for Session Five

3. Starter Activity — Bystander or upstander

4. Bystander

5. Definition of bystander

6. Activity 1 — Think positive

7. Activity 2 — Choose positive

8. Plenary – Staying safe

9. Learning outcomes for Session Five

❏ Resource Sheet 5a: 'Think positive' message

E. Assessment opportunity

Activity 1: Through observation of the role-play, pupils can demonstrate their understanding of empathy and positive behaviours.

Starter activity: Bystander or upstander

This exercise encourages pupils to care for themselves and look out for others. It challenges them to speak out when they see people being mistreated by considering how Kwan might feel when faced with a situation in which he believes people are talking about him. The story raises questions about how we can help each other to be strong by making our own better choices and how we might contribute to negative influence by not challenging it.

These are important lessons about how other people's perceived thoughts might lead us to feel unhappy. They are also helpful in framing conversations about how we should act online, specifically in social media spaces. It can be harrowing for those receiving insensitive comments or posts, even when they are genuinely intended as 'just as a joke'. Again, the overriding point of this activity is to get pupils thinking about how they choose to treat each other regardless of context (i.e. on or offline).

SHOW:

Slide 2: Learning outcomes for Session Five

Slide 3: Starter Activity – Bystander or upstander

Teaching tip

Refer back to Resource Sheet 3b - What are they thinking? completed earlier in the programme. This can be used to prompt pupils or alternatively they can annotate it using a different coloured pen.

EXPLAIN:

Thinking back to the scene reviewed last time with Kwan, Ella and the crowd of friends (Session 4 Activity 2 — What are they thinking?), write down words to describe how Kwan might have felt:

When he read what Ella posted online.
When he saw the group laughing with Ella.

Record these on the smart board.

ASK:

What is a bystander?

SHOW:

Slides 4-5: Bystander

EXPLAIN:

Imagine that you are one of the bystanders in the group with Ella.

ASK:

If you were part of the crowd in this situation, what could you do to stand up for Kwan?
What could you do about people posting messages online about what is happening to Kwan?

Discuss and agree on one or two tips and turn them into an 'advice wall' that you could display in class to support pupils.

Additional background: The 'bystander effect'

The 'bystander effect' or 'bystander apathy' describes a social phenomenon whereby individuals are less likely to offer help to someone (particularly a victim) when other people are present. The greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help.

Research by Robert Thornberg (2007) suggests that there are seven stages of moral deliberation by children as bystanders:

Noticing that something is wrong—children pay selective attention to their environment and sometimes don't tune in on a distressed peer if they're in a hurry or their view is obstructed.
Interpreting a need for help—sometimes children think others are just playing rather than actually in distress, or they display pluralistic ignorance.
Feeling empathy, i.e., having tuned in on a situation and concluded that help is needed, children might feel sorry for an injured peer or angry about unwarranted aggression (empathic anger)
Processing the school's moral frames—Thornberg identified five contextual ingredients influencing children's behaviour in bystander situations:
1. the moral construction of a good student,
2. institutionalised moral disengagement,
3. tribe caring, gentle caring girl morality, i.e. gender stereotypes, and
4. social-hierarchy-dependent morality.
Scanning for social status and relations. Students were less likely to intervene if they didn't define themselves as:
1. friends of the victim,
2. belonging to the same significant social category as the victim,
3. if there were high-status students present or involved as aggressors—conversely, lower-status children were more likely to intervene if only a few other low-status children were present.
Condensing motives for action by considering factors such as possible benefits and costs.
Acting, i.e., all of the above, merged into a decision to intervene or not. It is striking how this was less an individual decision than the product of a set of interpersonal and institutional processes.

Activity one: Think positive

This activity focuses on how we conduct our relationships online or via messaging applications. In particular, it centres on how communication can be misread or misunderstood without the gestures, body language and other social cues from face-to-face interactions, encouraging pupils to think about how they communicate by 'reframing' statements to give them a positive intent.

SHOW:

Slide 6: Activity 1 – Think positive

Teaching tip

This activity could be expanded to help pupils think through the options by ‘freeze framing’ the role-play, asking for each of the ‘protagonists’ to reflect on the situation and the class to advise the best ways to improve the outcome.

EXPLAIN:

Understanding what someone means when communicating via messaging apps can be challenging because we can't see their facial expressions or body language.

Here are some examples of messages that young people might send to each other:

Goodbye
Whatever
That's so stupid
So lame

Pupils should read out these messages in different tones of voice (e.g. angry, smiling, mocking, dreamy, etc.) or add additional information to provide a context (i.e. a message to a friend or someone they don't know online), noting how this might change the meaning.

Next, in small groups, pupils should discuss the following questions:

ASK:

Have you or someone you know ever been misunderstood in a message? (e.g. a joke that the other person thought was serious)
Have you ever misunderstood a message that you have received?

Encourage pupils to reflect on what they could have done differently or consider what they can do in future to avoid misunderstandings.

Hand out Resource Sheet 5a: 'Think positive' messages

EXPLAIN:

Working in small groups, review the messages from the sheet, 'reframing' each comment into something more positive and then role-playing the original and reframed responses.

Javal is the only one that didn't get into the football team, LOL!
Who does Savannah think she is, a film star?
Miles isn't very clever. We don't want him in our group.
You can't play with us because you speak funny.
Let's all bring our colouring books tomorrow, but don't tell Yasmin so she can't join in.
You can only join our chat group if you tell us your login.

Invite groups to share their positive and negative role-played scenarios with the class.

ASK:

How might the person have been feeling in each situation?

Activity two: Choose positive

Sometimes the outcome of a situation is not the result of misreading or misunderstanding it but being deliberately misled by an individual or group. In contrast to previous activities, this one explores those occasions where someone (in this case, online) appears to be acting in our best interests but, in reality, isn't.

SHOW:

Slide 7: Activity 2 – Choose positive

Read Kwan's story to the next check point (see below).

For pupils using iPads: the story will stop at the appropriate point and ask for check point 5 password (choice)

For pupils using non-iPad devices: the story will stop at the end of Episode 5

Teaching tip

This is an ideal opportunity to signpost pupils to how they might seek support if they experience an issue online e.g. tell a trusted adult, report it (CEOP).

EXPLAIN:

In this scene, Kwan is deliberately misleading Ella.

ASK:

Why does he do this?

Draw out why Kwan is likely to be upset or angry with Ella. Could this be his basic need to have power, for instance?

What are the possible implications for Kwan?
Why might Ella go along with this when it's someone she doesn't know? Could this be Ella's basic need to feel belonging or even have some power herself, or to feel a sense of freedom to make her own choices, for instance?
What are the possible implications for Ella?
What steps can we take to keep ourselves safe when people we don't know contact us?

Building on this, stress the impact that how we treat other people can have. Does the person we choose to be have a positive or negative perspective? How can this affect the way other people feel?

EXPLAIN:

We spend so much online that we occasionally see negative messages or bad behaviour.

ASK: (by show of hands)

Have you or anyone you know ever experienced someone being hostile towards you? (online or face-to-face)
Have you or anyone you know ever experienced a compliment, act of kindness or positive comment? (online or face-to-face)

Poll responses, drawing out any comparisons between the two.

ASK:

How differently did the two things make you feel?

Plenary: Staying safe

As well as doing all they can to keep themselves and others safe, pupils must also be aware of additional sources of help, advice or support available to them. Remind pupils of the agencies and organisations, locally and nationally, that exist to protect them, particularly when they are online.

SHOW:

Slide 8: Plenary — Staying safe

EXPLAIN:

Sometimes people act up because they are feeling vulnerable and don't know how else to express themselves. However, we all have a responsibility to act in a way that doesn't make another person feel upset or cause them harm.

We have seen over today's session that we can stand up for others, be role models, and reframe negative thoughts and comments to something more positive. This applies offline and particularly online, where it can sometimes be challenging to understand what a person means and where someone may be deliberately trying to manipulate us.

Once again, by looking at these things, we are becoming better at making choices no matter the circumstances.