Title of Lesson: Understanding Coping Strategies in a High School Setting

Grade Levels: 9-12

Duration: 45 minutes
ASCA/NYSSCA National Standards and Competencies:
Academic Development
Standard A: Students will acquire the attitudes, knowledge, and skills that
contribute to effective learning in school and across the life span.
Competencies: A: A1 Improve Academic Self-Concept

A: A1: 1 Articulate feelings of competence and confidence as

learners

A: A2 Acquire Skills for Improving Learning

A: A2: 3 Use communication skills to know when and how to ask for
help when needed
A: A2: 4 Apply knowledge and learning styles to positively influence
school performance

A: A3 Achieve School Success

A: A3: 2: Demonstrate the ability to work independently, as well

as the ability to work cooperatively with other students
A: A3: 4 Demonstrate dependability, productivity and initiative
A: A3: 5 Share knowledge

Standard B: Students will complete school with the academic preparation essential
to choose from a wide range of substantial post-secondary options, including
college.
Competencies: A: B1 Improve Learning

A: B1: 4 Seek information and support from faculty, staff, family,

and peers.

Career Development
Standard A: Students will acquire skills to investigate the world of work in relation to
knowledge of self and to make informed career decisions.
Competencies: C: A1 Develop Career Awareness

C: A1: 4 Learn how to interact and work cooperatively in teams

C: A1: 5 Learn to make decisions

C: C2: 3 Learn to work cooperatively with others as a team member

C: C2 Apply Skills to Achieve Career Goals

Personal/Social Development
Standard A: Students will acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and interpersonal skills
to help them understand and respect self and others.
Competencies: PS: A1 Acquire Self Knowledge

PS: A1: 5 Identify and express feelings

PS: A1: 6 Distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate
behavior
PS: A1: 8 Understand the need for self-control and how to practice it

Standard B: Students will make decisions, set goals, and take necessary action to
achieve goals.
Competencies: PS: B1 Self-knowledge Application

PS: B1: 4 Develop effective coping skills for dealing with problems

Standard C: Students will understand safety and survival skills.

Competencies: PS: C1 Acquire Personal Safety Skills

PS: C1: 11 Learn coping skills for managing life events

New York State Learning Standards

Health, Physical Education, and Family and Consumer Sciences
Standard 2: A Safe and Healthy Environment: Students will acquire the knowledge
and ability necessary to create and maintain a safe and healthy environment.
Students will identify ways they care for and show respect for self and others.
Students will also understand some basic requirements of nurturing people of
various ages and demonstrate appropriate ways to interact with them.
NOSCA Component
3. Enrichment and Extracurricular Engagement
Goal: Ensure equitable exposure to a wide range of extracurricular and enrichment
opportunities that build leadership, nurture talents and interests, and increase
engagement with school.
English Language Arts Standard 1: Language for Information and
Understanding: Students will listen, speak, read, and write for information and
understanding. As listeners and readers, students will collect data, facts, and ideas;
discover relationships, concepts, and generalizations; and use knowledge generate
from oral and written language that follows the accepted conventions of the English
language to acquire, interpret, apply and transmit information.
Learning Objective: After the counselor introduces and discusses coping methods,
students will categories coping strategies as positive, negative, neutral, and timeout behaviors. By working together in small groups, students will come up with the
proper categories in which various coping methods should be categorized. Group

sharing and discussion is encouraged, as well as learning from one anothers

stories. The key concept is to understand that everyone undergoes stressful
experiences and that everyone deals with difficult situations; the objective is to
learn from peers and to normalize the feelings that come with these emotions. The
ability to speak within these groups and class will create trust and the ability to
express feelings within a group.
Co-Leaders: 9 12th Grade classroom teachers
Materials:

Laptop
Whiteboard for projection of PowerPoint/writing classs coping
strategies
Coping strategies handouts (20+ depending on class size)
Five-six plain white poster boards
White board markers
One marker for each student

Accommodation: Students with physical disabilities: In an effort to accommodate

students with physical disabilities, school counselors must be prepared for various
disabilities. Students with physical disabilities covers a wide range of students;
these students could have disabilities that affect their mobility, their muscular
functioning, their coordination, which results in students having difficulty getting to
or from class, performing in class, and managing assignments in class. Since coping
methods will bring up sensitive topics and cause emotional conversation within the
class, students with physical disabilities may become uncomfortable within the
room if their disability is an uncomfortable topic for them or if it is something that
they are still coping with. Allowing a safe space within the room or allowing the
option to not participate in the activity should always be an option. Since this is a
counseling activity it is meant to help students become more emotionally sound,
not harm their well-being. Another accommodation should be the students access
to the door. Students with physical disabilities should be near the doors vicinity in
case of an emergency (i.e. fire drill) during the lesson and there has to be
immediate evacuation of the room. Although whoever assigns seats may not want
the student directly in the doorway to avoid the student feeling targeted as having
a disability, it is important to take notice if the child needs immediate access to the
exit and if there is a possible way for him/her to leave if there is an emergency.
Other accommodations made for a student with a physical disability would be to
permitting the use of a tape recorder or assistant if he/she has an issue with taking
notes. Another accommodation would be to allow taking this assignment home and
discussing the results of the lesson with the counselor at a later time if he/she is
unable to complete the task during the assigned time.
Introduction: (10 minutes)
Prior to the arrival of students, the classroom will remain in its normal setup.
The teacher will have the projector and computer set up for the professional school
counselor so that he/she is able to show the PowerPoint presentation showing the
four coping methods that will be discussed later in the lesson. The professional

school counselor will have the handouts, markers for the students, white board
markers, and the poster boards for the students promptly at her desk. The mood will
be calm, yet serious, indicating that this activity should be taken seriously and may
include emotional material.
The school counselor begins by greeting and thanking the class for their
participating and introducing himself/herself to the students. The professional
school counselor picture will then introduce the lesson topic, Understanding
Feelings and Coping Strategies. The professional school counselor will then briefly
discuss how everyone reacts to tragedy and feelings differently. He/she will also
explain that if at any time during the lesson someone feels uncomfortable or does
not want to express their feelings or personal stories, they are not obligated to in
any way. In addition to those stipulations, if a student does expose a personal story
about himself/herself, the other students are required to respect that students
privacy and maintain confidentiality. The professional school counselor will discuss
how adolescents at their age experience many stressors daily and at least 25% of
them will experience at least one significant stressor while the time they are in
school (Skinner & Zimmer-Gembeck, 2008). Connecting students and normalizing
their experiences is a major goal in this lesson. This topic will then lead into the
introduction of the word cope and how the students define it. The professional
school counselor will direct the discussion until a mutual definition is agreed upon.
Activity #1: Individual Brainstorming (15 minutes)

1. The professional school counselor will then ask how the students cope
with difficult issues and how they believe their coping strategies fit into
those categories.
2. The professional school counselor will distribute a handout that defines
the four coping strategies; these terms are positive coping strategy,
negative coping strategy, neutral coping strategy, and time-out
strategy.
3. The professional school counselor will be using a PowerPoint
presentation using these definitions for a larger display that will be
projected on the whiteboard.
4. Ask students to share their ideas or examples of what they believe fit
into those categories.
5. The professional school counselor will write students individual ideas
about coping strategies on the white board.
Activity #2: Put Your Ideas to Work! (15 minutes)

1. Divide the class into four groups.

2. Assign each group the task of identifying which coping strategy on the
list fits which category:

Group A: positive coping strategies

Group B: negative coping strategies
Group C: neutral coping strategies

Group D: time-out strategies

*Groups may be adjusted according to class size

3. Following the counselor-led instruction, the students will divide the

coping strategies into their specific groups through the use of
brainstorming, teamwork, active learning, and intrapersonal
intelligence.
4. Each group will present their category using the provided poster board
on which coping strategies they thought belonged in their category.
The students will discuss their list and why they chose particular
coping strategies.
Conclusion/Cool Down (5 Minutes)
The last 5 minutes of the class will be dedicated to any last minute questions or
discussion topics that the students wanted to discuss. Due to the nature of the
topic, it may have brought up some emotional issues and some students may want
to share personal stories. A quick End of Lesson Questionnaire will be distributed
which will include the four coping strategy categories and will ask for two example
of each coping strategy. This time is to allow an open forum for students to express
their feelings. It may also be a time for the professional school counselor to point
out common themes within each groups charts to promote further discussion.
Additionally, if students got upset, tired, or confused during the lesson, the last five
minutes of the session could be a good time to reflect on what they just discussed
for the last 40 minutes.
Assessment/Evaluation:
Accomplishment of the learning objective is completed by the activities given in the
lesson. The professional school counselor will compare the students knowledge
before the lesson to after. This could be done by looking at the list generated at the
beginning of the white board compared to what the students wrote down on their
poster board. By distributing the End of Lesson Questionnaire, the professional
school counselor is able to see concrete evidence of whether or not the student can
correctly identify at least two examples of each coping strategy. It is imperative to
review this material and observing the behavior in the classroom in order to provide
proper counseling services to these students and ensure that their needs are being
met. It is also important to share this information with stakeholders and examine
how attendance standards may not be met due to potential trends amongst
tragedies, stressors, or anxiety inducing factors. By understanding what is keeping
students out of school, we are able to make the changes within school in order to
get them there in an orderly manner.
Follow-Up:
In the following lesson, the professional school counselor will ask students about
their knowledge of the previous lesson, which was about anxiety. The counselor will
ask how this applies to their daily situation. This provides the class and the
professional counselor an opportunity to address any concerns or questions that
were not addressed after the previous lesson. The subsequent lesson may
encompass anxiety due to its subject matter and will cover various ways on how to
cope with different stressors, tragedies, and the emotions resulting from those.

COPING STRATEGIES
Positive Coping Strategy:
This is a strategy that enables you to restore emotional balance;
feel better about yourself; is respectful of you, others, and
property; and helps you to solve the problem
Negative Coping Strategy:
This is a strategy that does not restore emotional balance; may be
harmful to yourself, others, or property; does not solve the
problem, and may create additional problems.
Neutral Coping Strategy:

This is a strategy that is neither positive nor negative, but used to

excess, could be harmful.
Time-Out Strategy:
This is a strategy that helps you to calm down and restore
emotional balance. It is only temporary and must be used with
another positive strategy in order to solve the problem.

COPING STRATEGIES
What do you do when you experience a strong emotion?

Stamp my feet

Listen to music

Try to hurt someone

Punch pillows

Take a walk

Call significant other

Walk Away

Run

Play Sports

Write in my journal

Tell jokes

Exercise

Hide

Shop

Shop

Read a book

Draw / Paint

Think / reflect

Threaten someone
tantrum

Drink water

Take a nap

Text a friend

Count to 10

Tell my parent

Talk to a counselor

Gossip

Play a game
friends

Go see a movie

Curse
mediation

Throw a

Throw things

Count to 100

Break things

Watch TV

Take deep breaths

Scream

Eat

Sit down and think

Help someone

Ride a bike

Talk to myself

Hang with

Clean my room

Feel sorry for myself

Sing

Hit someone

Stare at people

Become silent

Try

Cry

Develop an attitude

Take a shower or a bath Talk with the person involved

Have fun

Go to a peaceful place
myself

Relax

Hurt

END OF LESSON QUESTIONNAIRE

Please list two possible coping methods for each category:

Positive Coping Strategy

Negative Coping Strategy

Neutral Coping Strategy

Time-Out Strategy