Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Tune In: What is a coward punch?

20 minutes

Find Out: Review of body systems

40 minutes

Take Action: What causes aggression?

5 minutes

Reflection

Tune In: What is a coward punch?

Step 1

To introduce the themes of the lesson, start off by discussing one or several of the following questions:

What do your kidneys have to do with fighting? (The adrenal glands sit atop the kidneys; most people are likely to think something so important as adrenal glands would be in your brain.)
Is it just your brain, your fist and your feet that are involved in a physical fight? (Think about the role of the heart and lungs; how are they involved?)
Is your brain the only thing involved in the fight or flight response, when you either prepare for a fight or run away from the situation? (The adrenal glands and your entire cardiovascular system are also involved - what role do they play?)

The idea you want to get across is that a myriad of different systems and organs are involved in our body’s response to danger, not just our muscles.

Step 2

Advise the class that today you will be looking at how body systems contribute to and are affected by the coward punch. Ask the students if they have heard of this before. Elicit responses to determine the prior knowledge of the class regarding this issue. If students have completed Coward Punch: Introductory Workshop - Years 9 & 10 they should have a sound understanding.

Step 3

If they have not already arrived at it through step 2, give the students the following definition:

A coward punch is a punch made without warning or while the victim is distracted, not allowing for any preparation by the victim.

Let them know that this can be a very dangerous situation for the person who is hit (the victim) and has many negative outcomes for the person who hit them (the perpetrator), as well as having a wider effect on many connected individuals and communities.

Step 4

Show the class the following videos to give context to this definition, allowing a small window of time for students to discuss each one.

"Life Sentence" - Stop the Coward Punch (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoeSyFIgDT8)

Coward's Punch | 9 News Perth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc6AGQqoiac)

Inform the students that this footage is over five years old, so the legal information is out of date. There is more information about current laws pertaining to the coward punch in this unit: STOP the Coward Punch: Civics and Citizenship - Years 7 to 10.

Find Out: Review of body systems

Step 1

Having determined what a coward punch is and the consequences of these, reorient the aims of the lesson again by directing students to the learning intentions or by again advising the class that you will be looking at how body systems contribute to and are affected by the coward punch.

Step 2

On their worksheets, they have a blank ‘Parts, Purpose, Complexities’ table and a list of information that fits inside it. In their groups, have them use a pencil to draft their answers in each box. Let them know that some parts are repeated, as they fit into more than one system. This table will also provide some useful prompts for Part C.

Step 3

When they are ready, display the worked example below and have them correct their worksheets. Let them know that today you will be focusing on the nervous system and the endocrine system.

Optional:

To get students out of their seats and working as a larger group, print just one copy of the word list for the class, blown up to A3 size and cut into single answer pieces. Draw the table, taking up the whole board, and have them work together as a class to blu-tack answers in the correct places.

Completed table:

Body system	Parts What body structures does it contain?	Purpose What does it do for the body?	Complexities How is it complicated?
Circulatory system	Heart Blood vessels (veins, arteries, capillaries)	To carry oxygen, nutrients, hormones and wastes to and from cells.	Very closely linked to all other systems, often facilitates the functions of other body systems.
Respiratory system	Lungs Trachea Diaphragm	To bring oxygen into the body and let carbon dioxide out.	This system works by using a muscle to create an area of low pressure.
Digestive system	Mouth Esophagus Stomach Intestines Liver Gallbladder Pancreas	To break down foods into energy our bodies can use.	This system contains an end-to-end pathway known as the GI tract, although other organs are also involved.
Excretory system	Kidneys Bladder Skin Liver Intestines Lungs	To remove wastes from the body.	The organs of this system don’t all work together like in other systems, but all contribute to the same function for the body.
Nervous system	Brain Brainstem (medulla) Spinal cord Receptors Nerves	To communicate and process information as well as control the body.	This system uses both electricity and chemicals to perform its function.
Endocrine system	Glands (adrenal, thyroid, pituitary) Hypothalamus Pancreas Gonad cells	To communicate instructions to the body for regulation including growth, repair, reproduction, digestion and stress responses.	This system is very closely linked to the nervous system, and uses special chemicals to communicate.

Take Action: What causes aggression

Step 1

Ask the students to think back to the context for the lesson, the coward punch. Ask them what emotions they think the perpetrators may be feeling when they attack. You may get answers such as jealousy, resentment or other emotions, but will hopefully also elicit the responses of anger and/or fear.

Let them know that we will now be looking at what happens to our bodies when we feel anger and fear.

Step 2

Working alone and quietly, have the students complete the following prompts on their worksheets, highlighting their observations of anger and fear.

	How did your mind react? What were your thoughts, how were your concentration and focus?	How did your body react? What did you notice about your heart rate, breathing, temperature, senses?	With your mind and body reacting this way, what did it make you want to do?
Think about a time you have been angry in the past.
Think about a time you have been scared or highly anxious in the past.

What do you notice about the mind and body columns as they relate to anger and fear? Were there similarities or differences?

Step 3

Have the students pair up and share responses. Give them a few minutes to talk about their observations.

Step 4

Ask the class for volunteers to talk about the mind column, what were the common answers? Repeat for the body column. Common answers include:

Mind: very focused, sharp, 'tunnel vision', alert, hard to remember things
Body: increased heart rate, faster breathing, bodily tension, restlessness, energised, sweating, shaking, temperature increase
Actions: scream or yell, raise arms in defence or attack, aggressive action

Step 5

Note that individuals will have varied responses, but the expected patterns of responses are highly likely to emerge.

Explain to the class that it is common for an anger and fear response to look similar in terms of mind and body, even if the reactions or outcomes are sometimes different. Fear is our body’s way of alerting us to something in our environment that may cause harm to us in one or more ways. Anger is one way of our body preparing to deal with the perceived threat; anger prepares us for action. In many situations, anger leads to negative outcomes. The feeling of heightened agitation, whether it’s fear, anxiety or anger, is part of the fight or flight response, where our body is ready to either flee from the threat or challenge that threat.

Step 6

Remind the students that the body is very complex and, therefore, many different reactions are happening all the time, including in the case of anger or fear. One of the processes triggered in this case is the adrenaline pathway of the stress response. The following is on the Student Worksheet; draw it or project it onto the whiteboard.

The adrenaline pathway

Step 7

Fill this in with the class as a game, following these steps:

Divide the class so that you have approximately four to six teams in total.
Give them 5 minutes to plan and guess as many as they can in their own teams quietly
(so other teams cannot hear). They can use the table of body systems from earlier to help with filling in the table.
Depending on the level of challenge you want to give the students, you may wish to only provide as much scaffolding as saying, “consider what you have in the table already”, through to referring to existing class notes or textbooks.
Have the teams take turns guessing any answer, e.g. a full response would be '4a, adrenal gland'.
State 'correct' and write it in place on the board or 'incorrect' as appropriate.
Play moves around the teams until all 23 answers are complete.

Notes:

This works best if the teams can choose a number anywhere in the diagram, not working from 1 to 7
If a team gets a right answer in a wrong position, this is an incorrect response - this way, other teams are reminded of a good answer but have to puzzle where it goes in the chain of events
Towards the end, you may need to give some hints
It is up to you how strict you are on what constitutes a fully correct response (i.e. eyes/ears/senses).

One solution is as follows, although descriptions of processes can vary.

Step 8

Explain to the students that this is an automatic response that our bodies have, and not a choice we make, however, we can make the choice to recognise what is happening to our bodies as evidence of stress, anger or fear and let our frontal cortex make better decisions for us.

Brainstorm with the class ways you could calm down from a heightened response like this. Examples include:

take a deep breath
walk away from the situation if possible
go for a run or excercise
meditate or practise mindfulness
practise gratitude, journal or colour
read, listen to music or watch something (YouTube, Netflix, TV)
talk to a friend, family member or wellbeing support staff.

Encourage students to take notes on coping mechanisms, highlighting their favourite.

Reflection

Ask students to offer insights on what they learned today and what today’s lesson made them wonder about.

What is one thing today’s lesson made you want to know more about?
How will you find this out?

You may wish to offer students the chance to provide feedback on the coward punch lesson or ask any outstanding burning questions they have about it.

Differentiated learning

Extension

Part B: For students who need an extra challenge, give them the blank table without the set of information. In this case, the complexities column is likely to look very different from the solutions.
Part C: Consider a film the students are studying or have studied in English or Media. Ask students to take any scene from this film where a character is showing intense anger or fear and get them to rate the actor’s performance based on how many physiological signs they demonstrate. Alternatively, choose a suitable scene otherwise.

Provisions for learning support

Part B: It may be helpful for some students to use cutouts of the words to arrange on a page rather than writing this many words. Alternatively, the complexities column could be removed to reduce the difficulty of the task.
Part C: Rather than using mind, body, action, simply ask the students what else made them notice they were angry or frightened. This language can be simplified for comprehension e.g. "What did you feel in your body?"

Coward Punch - The Body's Reaction to Danger

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