Fexting: Good Idea or Bad Idea?

Are you guilty of FEXTING?  Yes, you read that correctly!  I bet your students are!  What is it you ask?  That’s exactly what this lesson, “Fexting: Good Idea or Bad Idea?”, will explore!  I’ll give you a hint…it has to do with handling conflict.  So, if you teach about ways to handle conflict in relationships, you may want to mix in this extension assignment. Read on to learn more.

Set

  • Give each student a post-it note and ask them to give a definition for the term “FEXTING” on one side and on the reverse side ask them to write whether they think it’s a good or bad idea. Students should be prepared to share answers with the class. Ask them to make their best guess if they truly have no idea. This is more about piquing their interest and to see what they know.
  • Collect post it notes and pass out randomly to other students, making sure no one receives their own.
  •  As students share definitions, secretly keep track of which are correct, close or way off base. When finished you can respond with something like….a few answers are correct or close or no one in this class really knows what the term means, BUT don’t reveal the actual definition right now. Also, keep a tally of their good or bad idea predictions.
  • Ask students if they’ve ever experienced conflict in a relationship? The conflict could be with friends, parents, siblings, teammates, co-workers, etc. Most students should raise their hand because conflict is inevitable in healthy relationships and no relationship is that perfect to warrant zero conflicts.
  • Next, assign students the digital “Would You Rather (snapchat style)?” class slide deck.  Ask students to find a blank slide and add their name to the bottom space on the template. Ask them to answer the prompt honestly and give a brief explanation as to why.  The prompts are: Would you rather handle a conflict in person? OR Would you rather handle a conflict by text?
  • Give each student a minute to share their position and response, again, keeping track of the numbers for each option.

Materials

  • iPad or Laptop
  • Projector & Screen
  • Post-it-notes

Activities

  • Tell students they’re going to learn more about the term FEXTING and give them a graphic organizer to work through using a minimum of three reliable and current web-resources from the last two years. Encourage students to be thorough in their responses as they will need to use this information later.
  • Once everyone has their graphic organizers complete, discuss their findings as a class to learn more about this phenomenon. Again, encourage students to add more ideas to their graphic organizer even if they have to add information to the back side.
  • Ask students if their original definitions to this term were correct and do they still feel the same about their good or bad idea prediction. These can be general yes or no answers because students will explain themselves in the final part of this assignment via a writing activity.
    • Many schools require all courses (core and electives) to incorporate writing into their curriculum. Opinion prompts are a great way to do that and they are pretty easy to grade because they are only four paragraphs.
  • After students have discussed all of the prompts, give them an opinion writing (page 2 of graphic organizer) to complete based on the following prompt.
    • I believe fexting is a good idea or bad idea (choose one) when handling conflict in a relationship.
  • Be sure to stress that there are no right or wrong answers to this prompt, but grades will be based on how well they write their essay response.
  • Each part of the essay is worth 5 points for a total of 20 points. Did they include an introductory paragraph stating their position with lead in as to why?  Does paragraph one provide a reason that corresponds with their position along with supporting details?  Does paragraph two provide another reason that corresponds with their position along with supporting details? Finally, does their essay include a conclusion, summarizing their position?
  • If you wanted to include a bonus question, you could provide this to students when they turn in their essay.  There are two essay templates provided below; one with a bonus section and one without.  The bonus question is…What famous person helped popularize the term “fexting” in the last couple of years?  (Note: most of the articles I read in preparing this lesson, give reference to this person…FLOTUS.)
  • After writing assignments are collected, do a quick comparison of pre-lesson good/bad prediction numbers to post-lesson position numbers to see changes.
  • If time permits and you want to teach more about conflict in relationships, you may want to explore these lessons:

Attachments

Photo by Alex Ware on Unsplash

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