Friendship · Activity

Peer Pressure Refusal Skills

5th & 6th Grade

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Activity:  In this activity, students learn about how to choose friends wisely by being aware of positive and negative peer pressures. Peer pressure is defined, followed by a discussion about positive peer pressure and why it’s important to have good friends who want to help you make healthy choices. Students watch the resource video about peer pressure refusal skills and learn how to handle negative peer pressure.  Student groups of two or three create posters about the goals and five refusal skills explained in the video, followed by a show and tell about their creations. 

Materials needed: the resource video; five poster boards; decorating and art materials; a teacher prepared print-out of the 5 steps in the video

Directions: Introduce the activity: “An important life skill is learning to choose friends wisely by being aware of positive and negative peer pressures. Explain: “Let’s talk about who our peers are and what we mean by positive and negative peer pressure: your peers are people the same age as you. What do you think we mean by positive and negative peer pressure?” Give students a chance to respond, summarize their responses, and conclude by emphasizing how important it is to have good friends who want to help you make healthy choices. Ask them about what they do about negative peer pressure, when they’re pressured to do something they really don’t want to, and shouldn’t do. Let them know that you will help them learn some really good refusal skills. Show the video about learning how to handle negative peer pressure. Pause to check for comprehension after each new skill is introduced. Throughout the video ask questions, such as what is today’s mission, what are your goals, what is refusal skill #1, etc.? The class project will be to make 5 posters, each poster representing one of the peer pressure refusal steps. Assign pairs of students to make one poster that reflects one of the steps, including writing the step description, and at least one example. They can decorate the poster once they’ve done the writing. Assist students by giving them a print-out of the steps with examples so that each group can copy their assigned step. Display the posters in order, and invite students to do a show and tell about their poster.  

Wrap it up: Explain that the purpose of this activity is to develop skills in making and keeping good friends, and to learn about refusal skills that come in handy when you don’t want to do something that is wrong, illegal, too risky, against your parents wishes, against the rules, or something that makes you feel uncomfortable. If possible, leave the display posters up for a while, so that students can memorize the refusal skills. If you want to give them more information, have another session and show this video: What Is Peer Pressure Lesson Video, Peer Pressure Explained, Did You Know About Peer Pressure? (youtube.com). It’s very important that students have several opportunities to learn about peer pressure, discuss it, and even practice it in class by acting out scenarios. They can create their own - one in which a person suffers consequences because they don’t use refusal skills and another in which a person does use all the steps successfully and there are good consequences. 
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