Lesson Plan Unit: Stress. Overview: Background Information:

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1 Melissa Buege TED 423 Writing, Speaking, Listening 5 Lesson Unit Plan Oral Culminating Activity Lesson Plan Unit: Stress Overview: During this unit, students will study stress what it is, what causes it, how the body reacts to it, why it can be harmful and beneficial, and how it can be relieved. Adolescents have a variety of sources of stress in their life, the main ones being from school, homework, peer pressure, family life, and jobs. Youth need to know what stress is, how to identify stressors in their life, evaluate their stress level, and find constructive ways to relieve stress. Background Information: Stress is the effect that any situation or event has on the body and mind. Stress is change that must be adjusted to. Stressful events include injury, illness, or the death of a loved one. These are negative events, but stressful events can also be those things that are positive, such as graduating from high school, getting a new job, or moving to a new home. Sources of stress can come from the environment or the body. Stressors from the environment include: weather, noise, crowding, interpersonal demands (i.e. peer pressure, family issues or changes), time pressures, performance standards and threats to security and self-esteem. Stresses from the body include the rapid growth of adolescence, illness, accidents, poor diet, and sleep disturbances. There are two types of stress: eustress, which is good stress and distress, or bad stress. Eustress is stress that produces a positive effect. For example, before a sports event, such as a race, athletes often get nervous. This stress helps the athlete perform to the best of his or her ability. A second example of eustress is threatened safety. A person who is being chased by someone or something threatening their safety feels stress. This stress is positive because the person threatened is able to run and fight better than they would without the stress. Distress is the stress one feels because of relationships, life demands, etc. It is unproductive. The General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) is the body changes that occur when a person experiences stress. There are three stages of the GAS are:

2 1. Alarm stage something happens and the body releases adrenaline, a chemical from the brain. The heart beats faster, there is a burst of energy, blood flow increases, breathing quickens, muscles tighten, and blood is directed from the digestive system to the muscles. The pupils widen, the senses become more acute. (Example: when you are alone at night and you hear something and think it is a robber. For a while after this you can hear every little sound) In a real threatening situation, these reactions are good because they help you to survive. But when these occur this reaction occurs because of everyday events, it just makes you feel lousy. Physical reactions include things such as headache, stomachache, asthma, or muscle spasms. 2. Resistance Stage the body tries to recover from stress reaction and return to homeostasis, or normal functioning. Sometimes this happens right away, as when a runner runs a race and then is done with the race. Also, when you feel nervous and then realize everything is okay (a police man follows you, you think you are speeding, then he passes you and pulls over someone else). You can immediately feel your body relax. Youth have many stressors in their lives, stemming from school, peers, homework, family demands, jobs, etc. It is very important that they learn coping strategies that will help them relieve stress. Coping strategies need to be those that are constructive. Stress can lead people to cover up feelings by using coping strategies that are dangerous. Smoking, drinking, or taking drugs are all ways of masking feelings while attempting to relieve stress. These are ineffective ways of relieving stress. The person never learns how to deal with the stress constructively. If this is the only they have learned to deal with stressors, an addiction is likely. After the person is sober again, the body still must cope with the stress. If the body cannot rid itself of excess stress, the body goes on to the third stage of the general adaptation syndrome. 3. Exhaustion Stage If a person does not utilize adequate coping strategies, their body goes into the exhaustion phase. This is when they may become ill, have high blood pressure, a heart attack, or even die. The person will be less able to resist new stressors and will become stressed easily by inconsequential things. They become less immune to disease because there body is dumping protein, which is needful to make white blood cells. The chemicals in the

3 Objectives: brain may become out of synch, and the person may experience depression. This stage does not have to happen. It may however, be inevitable when a major life crisis happens, such as a death. Students will be able to: state what stress is and how it affects the body. determine their level of stress. identify feelings that are caused by stressful situations. identify the differences between constructive and unconstructive ways to relieve stress. describe healthy ways to cope with and relieve stress. Day 1 What is stress? Introduction to Stress Anticipatory set: Overheads of stressful situations (cars in a traffic jam, child home ill, person with pile of homework, graduation day, person running to catch a bus, person out in cold weather, etc) will be shown to students. In groups, students examine the pictures and evaluate what is happening. What is happening in the picture? If the situation involves a problem, could it have been avoided? What might the person(s) be thinking or feeling? What do all of these situations have in common? (They are situations a person goes through in life that create feelings and reactions) What do these situations do? What did you feel like when you experienced a similar situation? With the help of students, a definition of stress can be constructed. Write this on the board. Activity: Tennis ball toss as a metaphor for stress Procedures: 1. Ask a student volunteer to come up to the front of the room.

4 2. Explain that you are going to toss the tennis balls to him/her one at a time and that he/she is to catch them and hold onto them. 3. Toss the balls to him/her slowly so that most may be caught. 4. Next, retrieve the balls and say that you are going to toss them to him/her again, but this time it will be faster. 5. Toss them quick enough so that he/she has trouble catching most of them. 6. Stop and explain that sometimes problems come at you slow enough that you can handle them easily, and sometimes they come too fast for you to handle all of them at the same time. This shows how stress can build up. 7. Now take all of the tennis balls and toss them to him at once. He/she will not be able to catch many of them. 8. Explain that sometimes it doesn t have to be a lot of little things that build too much stress in our lives. It can be just one large problem such as a death in the family, breaking up with a boyfriend or girlfriend, a divorce, moving into a new area or school, etc. 9. Discussion questions a. How did the catcher do when the tennis balls came at him slowly, one at a time? b. How did the catcher do when the tennis balls came at him faster, one at a time? c. How did the catcher do when the tennis balls were all tossed to him one at a time? d. What can this activity tell us about stress in our lives? *This activity adapted from: Activities That Teach, by Tom Jackson Ask students if stress always harmful. Let them think a moment, then have them answer this question. Stress is good when we have to defend ourselves or when we need to perform well, as in a sports event. Stress actually helps us do better. But the distress we feel when we are worried or have a lot to do, it is not always beneficial. Lecture: Good stress / Bad stress Activity: Hand out the stress level evaluation worksheet. In pairs, students evaluate the stress level of some case studies using the handout provided.

5 Remind students to keep these in their folders, as they will be used in the next few days. Activity: Stress Awareness Calendar/Diary This will be introduced today and will only take a few minutes. It will be done everyday for about 4 or 5 days. This activity gives students an opportunity to identify stressors and to keep a continuous record of the incidents. Students will record the stressful event, the day and time, and their reaction. Resources: Overhead projector Overheads of stressful situations and good/bad stress Six tennis balls Bucket to carry the balls in Stress Awareness Calendar/Diary Stress level handouts Stress case study handouts Day 2 How I react to stress (physical and emotional reactions) Anticipatory Set: When students come into the room and are seated, a pop quiz will be announced. After the quiz, students will brainstorm the most frequent causes of stress in their lives. These will be written on the board. They will be written on a continuum, from least stressful to most stressful. Ask them where they would place a pop quiz. What did you feel like? What was happening in your body? Lecture: General Adaptation Syndrome what happens to the body as a result of stress. Activity: With the case studies from the day before, students in pairs will write down the bodily reactions these people most likely would be experiencing. What are these people experiencing as a result of their stress? Give an example: upset stomach

6 Activity: In groups students will discuss reactions (emotional, physical, and behavioral) a person might have in stressful situations. These can be something that happens in our body (like a headache), something that we feel (like sadness), or something we do (like go turn the music on). Next they will do the reactions to stress worksheet. These are mainly things people do in response to stress. In groups, they should rate the reactions to stress from the least healthy to the most healthy. Why is a particular reaction healthy or unhealthy? Construct a continuum on the board, least healthy at one end and most healthy at the other. Ask each group to offer their answers and reasons. Now that the stress levels and the bodily reactions have been identified, what would be important for these people to have? State focus of next class: Healthy Stress Relievers Activity: Lastly, as an exit card, students will individually answer these questions in writing: 1. What are the situations that cause me stress? 2. What do I feel like (physically and emotionally) when these things happen? 3. What do I do when these things happen? Resources: Overheads for GAS Overhead projector Case studies Day 3 Healthy ways to reduce stress Anticipatory set: A clip from a funny movie. This can be a clip such as something from a Laurel and Hardy or Little Rascals movie, or something recent, such as a clip from Discuss with students what happened to them as they watched the movie. What were their emotions? Do they feel better than when they came into the room?

7 Think, Pair, Share: Ask the students: Have you ever laughed really, really, hard so that tears came into your eyes? Have students think of a time when they were able to laugh really hard about something. Have them think of the incident, and how they felt. Ask them to share the time with a partner. Activity: Steps 1, 2, and 3 of Laughing Matters, Investigating the Medical Powers of Laughter from the New York Times. Activity: Hand out copies of the articles to groups of students. Each student will read one of the articles, and then tell their peers what the article was about. (Use articles such as: exercise as a stress reliever, music as a stress reliever, eating well as a protection against stress, family/friend support as a reliever for stress etc.) In groups, students will answer these questions: What do these activities do? Why would they be considered healthy? These activities help us make the stress go away; they are coping strategies. As a group brainstorm other healthy ways to relieve stress. Resources: Reactions to stress handout Stress relief articles Movie clip TV Video player Day 4 Anticipatory set: As students come into room, have calming stress relieving music softly playing, pictures of calming scenes (beautiful woods, stillness, sea shore) projected on a screen (if done with a computer, have them rotating slowly), a candle burning, lights low, etc. The idea is to make the atmosphere as peaceful as possible. *Be sure to remind students to stay away from the candle, and if they use one at home for stress relief purposes, to never leave it unattended and get the okay of a parent.

8 Instruct students to take a seat and sit quietly. Announce that today we will be learning some relaxation/stress relieving activities: 1. Music 2. Conscious breathing 3. Visualization 4. Tensing/relaxing of muscles 5. Aromatherapy Go over each of the 5 stress relieving activities with the students. Do the visualization, conscious breathing, and tensing/relaxing of muscles activities. Ask the students which relaxation method they liked the best. Ask how they felt at the beginning of class, with the music and pictures, etc. Give each student a handout of the directions for each stress relieving activity. Activity: Students in pairs will do the following exercise: One student will be a person who is feeling stressed. (They will be given a case study to read) The other student will prescribe a healthy regime to relieve stress for the stressed student. First, the stress load must be evaluated with the stress evaluation worksheet. Then the person must be educated. Tell them what stress is, how our body reacts, what can happen if we don t relieve stress, etc. Lastly, they must give the 5 good suggestions to relieve stress. Instruct students to bring in their stress diaries/journal in tomorrow. Resources: CD player CD of relaxing music Candle, matches Handout of directions for each activity Pictures Overhead projector Screen Evaluation of Stress handout (from first day) Case studies

9 Day 5 Anticipatory Set: As a review, students will play a matching game utilizing the information learned about stress. Each group will be given a set of index cards. Some will have a term written on them, others will be definitions or examples. They must pair the term with the definition. Activity: Today students will review their stress calendars/diaries they started on the first day of the unit. They will answer the questions on the worksheet provided. 1. Write your definition for stress. 2. What time of day seems to be the most stressful for you? 3. Who are the people who seem to be around when you are feeling stress? 4. What feeling occur most often when you are experiencing a stressful situation? 5. How do you react when you are experiencing stress? 6. Write an observation about you and your ability to deal with stress. 7. List some of the things you could change in your life to reduce the stress you feel. 8. How could you change your attitude to better deal with stress? Activity: Stress Jeopardy Students will be divided into groups and will play the game jeopardy. Culminating Activity: Individually, students will create a pamphlet about stress. They will present this individually in their groups. Also, they will be required to give a presentation of their pamphlet to their family. They must have a form signed by their parent. Resources: Index cards with terms, definitions written on them Jeopardy game materials Stress calendar conclusions worksheet for each student Instructions for culminating activity for each student Political representative addresses Samples of letter forms

10 Stress Pamphlet Congratulations! You are a fitness and lifestyle counselor at the YMCA, and because of your expertise in the area of stress, you have been asked to speak at a stress workshop to be held at the YMCA. You have decided to create an awareness pamphlet about stress to give to those at the workshop and to your clients at the YMCA. Your pamphlet should include the following: Definition of stress The difference between good stress and bad stress The body s response to stress What emotions stress may cause Lots of healthy stress relievers Unhealthy ways people try to relieve their stress. Include why these do not work! Where readers can go to find out more After completing your pamphlet present your pamphlet to those at the workshop (your family!) and your clients (a group of students at school!). Have the workshop participants and clients sign below: Workshop participants: Clients: