Communication Styles

After teaching my students about communication skills, I decided to spend a couple of days going over the different communication styles. The three communication styles consist of passive, aggressive and assertive. The best part of this lesson was the enthusiam my students exhibited when creating video skits of the communication styles based on selected scenarios. Wonder why? The video skits was their idea, so naturally they bought into it!

Set

  • This lesson began with note-taking….I know….not very exciting, but students needed background knowledge of the styles before they could do much else. Notes were presented via a slide presentation and students completed their notes form.
  • Students then practiced identifying the different styles of communication with some written examples.
  • Following this, students predicted their communication style before taking a survey to see which style they really were. As with most surveys, some students totally nailed their predictions, while others were surprised by their results.

Materials

  • iPads, Laptops or Video Recording Devices
  • Projector & Screen
  • iMovie App (optional)

Activities

  • For review, show the YouTube video titled, “2 Minute Therapy: Are You Passive Aggressive or Assertive?” to see the different styles modeled.
  • For the video skits, students were placed in small groups. I was fortunate to have groups of three so it worked out perfectly. Students were randomly assigned a scenario to work with. They had to create a school appropriate video that showed the scenario three ways. One way had to represent the passive approach, one had to represent the aggressive approach and the third had to illustrate the assertive approach. The skits had to include not only include verbal responses, but the body language had to match.
  • After writing their scripts and determining who would be which communication style, students took turns recording and acting in the skits. Since we are a 1:1 school with iPads, students recorded their videos using iMovies and then downloaded them to their Google drive to share with me and the class.
  • Students viewed each others’ video and peer evaluated them on their verbal and non-verbal responses. Students had to determine if the body language was present and matched the verbal response of the style being shared. They also had to share one positive about the videos as well as one improvement for each group.

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