Role playing can be a great experiential activity to have students understand a variety of behaviors from various perspectives. Students can work as partners, with one student playing the parent and the other playing the child. Teachers can present different scenarios to the duos and have them act out a conversation. Then, they can switch roles and tackle the same topic or be presented with a different topic. Role playing can also work in a small group setting with each person playing a different role, pretending to be a family or perhaps a boss and his employees.
Having each student teach a mini-lesson to the class can be a great way to help them gain insight into how teachers' interpret student behavior. By switching roles from the student to teacher, students gain understanding and empathy for the behaviors that teachers must deal with on a daily basis. This type of insight may improve their typical classroom behavior because they have now experienced the other perspective. After their teaching experience, have students complete a questionnaire about their experience to further ingrain the lessons they learned.
Having students observe other students in a classroom setting can be a great experiential learning activity. The most difficult aspect of this assignment is the fact that the students being observed might act differently knowing they are being watched and evaluated. This type of experiential learning activity could be done as an individual or the whole class could go observe a classroom together. However, quiet, less obvious observation is best for the most natural response. Teachers can prepare questions about the observation for the students to respond to as well as ask for their own observations and reactions.
On the other hand, it would be easy for students to observe others in a less obvious way at recess or during lunch. Students will be too busy talking, playing, or eating to pay much attention to observers. This setting would allow the observing students to watch carefully and jot down plenty of notes about what they witness. Teachers could also ask students to note who the leaders, followers, and outsiders are and what behavioral traits they notice about these different types of students. By analyzing others behavior, students will innately categorize themselves into one of these types and recognize how they are being perceived based on their behavior.