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    Setting Boundaries

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    Subject: SEL (Social-Emotional Learning)

    Lesson Length: 45 mins - 1 hour

    Topic: Boundaries

    Grade Level: 4, 5, 6, 7

    Standards / Framework:

    Brief Description: Through prompted questions in comics, students will reflect on people and situations where they may have struggled with setting boundaries to better prepare for similar future scenarios.

    Know Before You Start: Students should understand what boundaries are and why they are important to establish.

    Hook:

    • Have students think of a time someone asked them a question or wanted to know something about them that made them feel uncomfortable. How did they handle it?
    • Explain that sometimes we are asked to explain ourselves even when we have the right not to respond, it’s called setting boundaries. In the moment it can be hard to set boundaries by saying no to someone when they ask a favor or telling someone that it’s not something you’d like to share when they ask a personal question.

    Activity:

    • Display and discuss the sample comic.
    • Have students create a fictional comic demonstrating their understanding of setting boundaries.
      • The following conversation sentence frames will help them dialogue asking for help (comic panel 5).  
        • That is something I would rather not talk about…
        • I don’t like it when people speak to me that way. I’d prefer...
        • I appreciate you asking me to do that, but I’d rather...
    • Remind students that these should be fictional scenarios and people.

    Closure:

    • As a class, have students reflect on their answers:
      • What makes it hard for me to establish boundaries?
      • How can I respect other people’s boundaries better? 
      • What happens if someone keeps crossing boundaries that I have tried to establish?

    Differentiation:

    • Allow students to use the speech-to-text feature.
    • Allow students to work in pairs or groups as needed.
    • Allow students to use the voiceover feature to read their comics aloud.

    Resources:

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