Alternate Activity 1: Conflict Resolution Role Plays
Part of Faithful Journeys
Activity time: 20 minutes
Preparation for Activity
- Read the conflict scenarios provided. Adapt as you wish and/or add your own.
- Optional: Arrange chairs for an audience in a semicircle around a performance space.
Description of Activity
Tell participants they will have a chance to solve a conflict peacefully, with no violence. Ask for volunteers to act out the scenarios. End a role play when a conflict has been resolved peacefully. If a conflict gets stuck without resolution, you may ask new volunteers to try it, or open the scenario for a group discussion.
Optional: To emphasize the return to reality, invite role players to spin in a circle one time when they are done and return to their true selves.
At the end of each role play, ask the group:
- What helped resolve this problem?
- What was tried that did not work?
- Did anything make the conflict worse? Why?
- What else could the characters have tried?
- Has anyone here ever been in a similar situation? What did you do?
Affirm all suggestions of peaceful solution seeking. Do not belabor a non-peacemaking solution; simply move on to another contribution.
Role Play Scenarios
- Your younger brother follows you around everywhere and wants to do everything you do. He especially loves to knock down creations you have made from blocks and Legos. You just finished making a Lego house that you worked on for two hours. You are very proud of it. Your brother is coming towards you with a ball and looks like he is about to throw it at your house. What do you do?
- There is a new child in your class at school. Your best friend is suddenly ignoring you and spending all of their time with the new child. Sitting in the cafeteria at lunchtime, you overhear the new child saying mean things about you to your best friend. Your best friend looks at you uncomfortably, but then just laughs. What do you do?
- There is a new child in your class at school. You like them a lot and have been trying to be friendly. At lunchtime they whisper insulting things to you about your best friend. What do you do?
- You brought your favorite toy to Faithful Journeys today to show your friends. You placed it on a table during coffee hour. Now another child is playing with it. You ask for it back, but they say that it is theirs - that they brought it from their house today. What do you do?