As an integral part of the ongoing effort by schools to prevent violence against students, this graduate project will address the issue of school violence by developing a school violence prevention curriculum targeting third, fourth and fifth graders. Implemented by qualified school counselors, this school curriculum will raise the consciousness of these students with regard to school violence and provide them with practical strategies to prevent school violence. Based on the research highlighted in the previous chapters, high school students who engage in violent behavior typically exhibited aggression in their younger years. Therefore, this curriculum that targets elementary school students will offer a timely intervention to prevent the further escalation of these aggressive behaviors in at-risk students.
In this "Methods" chapter, the following topics will be discussed: a) the method used in developing the project from its initial inception to the final completion; b) personal qualifications of the school counselors who will be implementing the school violence prevention curriculum; c) the environment and the equipment used to implement the curriculum; and d) an outline of the content of the activities and procedures for implementing the curriculum.
The school curriculum was developed by reviewing the types of curriculum utilized by other violence prevention programs that are targeted at elementary school children in order to identify the key concerns of violence prevention. Even more importantly, this researcher relied on Kathleen Knoblock's (1997) Character Education: Teaching Values for Life and Margaret Fetty's (2003) Character Education: Fairness, Citizenship, Responsibility, Caring, Respect, Trustworthiness to devise age-appropriate activities. Moreover, a few worksheets from these booklets were adapted for the purposes of this study.
Using these materials as a source of information and inspiration, three le...