Lesson 1: Everything’s okay! Really?

What problems/conflicts can we observe in our class?

Lesson description

The teacher writes the lesson title “Everything’s okay! Really?” on the blackboard. The students are given the task to think about all the things that they think are not okay in their classroom. When giving the task to the students, the teacher should point out the different areas in which problems or conflicts can arise:

• when working together with other classmates;
• between girls and boys;
• when sharing things – such as the same table or the same room;
• being friends with somebody.

The students write down all the problems or conflicts that they can think of on small slips of paper and go individually to the blackboard and pin them on.

After all the slips of paper have been stuck onto the blackboard, the students sit in a circle in front of it.

Next, the teacher should point out that there are two different kinds of problems – individual prob­lems and common problems. He or she gives examples of each type: for example, a lot of noise in the classroom would be a common problem, but not having enough space on a table would be an individual problem. The teacher goes through the problems on the blackboard one by one and tries to get the students to sort them into the correct category. For this, the teacher has prepared two sheets with a short explanation of “common problems and conflicts” and “individual problems and conflicts”. He or she pins them on the top of the blackboard in order to create two columns.

Once the students have finished sorting out the problems and conflicts, the teacher starts a discussion about which of them can be easily solved.