Peer Pressure

The following guidance lessons include activities from two different resources and can be used for more than one lesson on peer pressure and decision making. The first activity – “Pressure, Pressure, and More Pressure” is one out of a series of lessons on decision making and dealing with peer pressure from an activity book called Large Group Guidance Activities: A K-12 Sourcebook by Joe Wittmer and Diane W. Thomson . The second activity involving a decision-making worksheet and role-playing, comes from a book called Skills for Living: Group Counseling Activities for Young Adolescents. These two guidance lessons can be incorporated into classroom curriculum or used to meet a specific classroom need. The lessons described below are geared primarily to students in upper elementary school and junior high; however suggestions for how the activities could be adapted to younger children have been included at the end of each lesson. The purpose of these guidance lessons is to help students understand the effects of peer pressure on decision-making.