Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

15 minutes

Tune In: About The Coward Punch

25 minutes

Find Out: The Campaign

15 minutes

Take Action: Snowball fight

10 minutes

Reflection

Lesson preparation

Leave an open space in the room where all the students can gather and move around. At one end of this space put up a sign that says “Agree”. At the other end put up a sign that says “Disagree”. The space between will act as a scale over which students can move to indicate how much they agree or disagree with a statement. The middle can be for those who are unsure or neither agree nor disagree.

Optional: Place a raffle ticket under each seat and draw these out throughout the workshop, providing STOP the Coward Punch stickers or keyrings. These can be purchased at: https://cowardpunchcampaign.com/shop/

Tune In: About The Coward Punch

Step 1

Welcome students to this workshop. Outline your organisation or school’s behavioural expectations for the session.

For example:

Own your ideas by using “I think” rather than “you should”.
Respect each other by remembering that each person has their own beliefs and values and their own worldviews, experiences and opinions. Each person has a right to contribute their ideas so listen politely.
Be brave in sharing your ideas, experiences and opinions.
Consider the privacy of your classmates and appreciate that everyone has the right to uphold their privacy; this might mean they don’t want to share their ideas or experiences on an issue.
Share feedback in a way that is considerate and positive: remember to be kind, helpful and specific when providing feedback.

Safety first: Explain that some of this content might be challenging for some people and that if they need to take some time out, that is ok. Invite students to just check in with an adult in the room so that someone knows where they will be.

Step 2

Ensure everyone can see the screen and play this video from STOP the Coward Punch:

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

Step 3

Give students one to two minutes to turn to a partner and share their thoughts and feelings about the campaign video.

Step 4

Invite students to stand and move to the designated location within the space for this activity (as outlined in the lesson preparation).

Explain the following:

At one end of this space, there is a sign that says “Agree”. At the other end, there is a sign that says “Disagree”. Where you are standing (between these signs) is somewhere on the scale between agree and disagree. I am going to read out a series of statements. Move to the place in the room that indicates how much you agree or disagree with each statement. The middle can be where you stand if you are unsure or neither agree nor disagree with the statement.

Some of you will have the opportunity to reflect upon what you observe about where people are gathered on the scale. This isn’t an opportunity to share your personal opinions, but rather a chance to notice any patterns or confusion around the statements and examine how the group thinks as a whole and why this might be the case.

Clarify that students understand the instructions and give visual examples if you need to.

Step 5

Read the following statements and allow time for students to arrange themselves in the space according to whether they agree or disagree with a given statement:

One punch isn’t going to kill or permanently disable someone.
Coward punch is a better term than king hit.
Some people deserve to be punched.
The coward punch is only an issue for males.
People who kill people with one punch are mostly older.
Injuries to the brain heal quickly.
Coward punches only happen when people are on drugs.
Curfews or club/pub lockins are the best way to prevent coward punches.
Mandatory jail terms are the best way to prevent coward punches.
People are going to get into fights sometimes. There’s nothing I can do about it.
It’s unlikely that I or someone I know is ever going to be affected by a coward punch.

After any or each of the statements ask one or two students to reflect on what they notice about how the group is scattered or gathered. Choose instances where you notice an interesting pattern, such as the whole group gathering together at one end, or in the middle; or if there is broad disagreement amongst the group.

Note: Try not to single out individuals who might disagree with the broader group as this could make them feel uncomfortable or defensive. Take note and perhaps consider asking them about this after the session if you have any genuine concerns about an individual’s responses.

Step 6

Have everyone find their seats and display the following statistics and facts:

234 Australians were killed by a coward punch between 1990 and 2020 from 471 cases.
77% of victims of coward punches required medical care (between 1993 and 2019) and 82% lose consciousness or experience brain impact.
Those who survive a coward punch assault are often never the same again. They may be left in a vegetative state or endure lifelong severe mental and physical disabilities that impact their quality of life and capacity to contribute.
55.2% of coward punch offenders are unknown to the victim.
Almost all cases of coward punches in Australia (between 1990 and 2020) involved males. Only 11% of victims and 1.4% of perpetrators were female.
The average age of offenders of coward punches is 26.
Alcohol is the most commonly detected drug in perpetrators of coward punch assaults.
Most coward punch assaults occurred between 6 pm and midnight.
There are now coward punch laws in most states that have a minimum mandatory jail term for perpetrators of coward punches of between 8 and 25 years.

Sources: Rule of Law Education Centre, VIFM Research Update 2019, An analysis of offence patterns and legal response to one-punch fatalities in Australia and STOP the Coward Punch advertising campaigns.

Read each statistic and allow time for each one to sink in. It might be helpful to put each one up on a separate slide.

Step 7

As a whole group, invite some students to make links between the statistics and the statements from the previous scale activity. Consider whether any of these statistics challenged the group’s beliefs about any of the statements.

Find Out: The Campaign

Step 1

Play this video that explains the background of the STOP the Coward Punch campaign and its successes up to 2018.

Coward's Punch - Case Study (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vTuZ3EHvhI)

Explain that the video they watched at the start of the session is a more recent campaign, launched in November 2021.

Step 2

Play this video:

HARDHITTING FACTS (https://vimeo.com/670410256) Password: CowardCool

Invite students to reflect in small groups on the impact of including statistics in this campaign. Do they feel that the statistics have an emotional or intellectual impact on the viewer? If so, what are these impacts?

Invite groups to share key thoughts about the use of statistics in the campaign.

Take Action: Snowball fight

Step 1

Ensure each student has an A5 or A6 piece of paper or sticky note.

Ask that each student selects one statistic or fact that stood out to them from this session (you might need to display them again, all on one slide) and write it at the top of their paper.

Underneath, or on the back, they should write down one of the following and mark it with the appropriate letter:

Learn (‘L’): Something related to this statistic that they want to learn more about.
Concern (‘C’): Something that concerns them about this statistic.
Idea (‘I’): An idea they have for improving this statistic.

For example, if the fact selected was that almost all coward punches in Australia involved males, the student could write one of:

L - What are people thinking or feeling when they snap and act out violently?
C - Some people think it’s cool to be aggressive and encourage that behaviour in others.
I - Teach young people to de-escalate conflicts.

Step 2

Once students have written their comments, have them screw up their piece of paper. Explain that they will have a maximum of 30 seconds to throw their pieces of paper at each other in a snowball fight. Then they will need to pick up a ‘snowball’ near them and unravel it.

Set a timer to 30 seconds ensuring they stop on time.

Step 3

Remind students to pick up a ‘snowball’ near them and unravel it and have a read. Make sure every pair has at least one ‘snowball’ that is suitable to inspire a brief discussion.

Have them turn to a partner and discuss the Learn, Concern or Idea written on their paper/s. Allow two minutes for the discussion.

Step 4

If time, invite a few volunteers to share what was written on their ‘snowball’ and their thoughts about it. Alternatively, you could collect a couple of leftover ‘snowballs’ to discuss with the group as a whole.

Step 5

At the close of the session, invite students to try to straighten out the papers. Point out that the paper will never again look the way it did before it was creased.

Note: This is much like the brain after the impact of a coward punch (but also after education - when you know better, you do better). You might choose to point these concepts out or leave them to make the connection themselves.

Step 6

Thank students for attending and invite anyone with any concerns or experiencing challenging feelings in response to the content to reach out to one of the facilitators. You might like to show them the referral agencies listed on the Handling Sensitive Topics and Issues Factsheet (page 2) or place posters up around the space for the following weeks or months.

Step 7 (optional)

If you are planning to deliver other content related to coward punches across your school or organisation, bring this to the students’ attention.

Differentiated Learning

Extension - Some students might benefit from reading the research reports directly and exploring the graphs and tables. You can access them here:

Provisions for Learning Support -

Provide already written statistics on individual pages for distribution to students for use in Part C.
If a snowball fight isn’t going to work for your group, you could have students hand in their pages and shuffle them, redistributing them throughout the group. You could also check each one before handing it out, providing only one for each pair or group of three. This allows you to filter out anything inappropriate.

Coward Punch - An Introduction

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