1st & 4th Bullying Lessons

1st grade

For this weeks bullying awareness lesson with 1st grade, the story "Chester Raccoon and the Big Bad Bully" was used to teach students about what a bully, bystander, and target/victim are. To start the lesson, students were informed of what all the words meant, then role-played with the counselor as the 'bully,' one student as the 'victim,' and several other students as the 'bystanders.' (It's never good to have a student play the bully or for a timid student to play the victim.) The role play involves the 'bully' saying something along the lines of "Give me your lunch money!" and the rest of the students playing along. It's a nice visual for students to understand what all the terms mean and they enjoyed 'playing' along. To reinforce student understanding of the terms, the story was then read to the students and discussion questions were asked from the book, "That's My Story Too!". Students then had the opportunity to complete two activity sheets from the Tanglewood Press website, one where they cut and pasted positive things to cover up or "Get Rid of the Bully!" In the other activity sheet, students identified what they would do if someone bullied them. Student's then signed the pledge banner against bullying and received a 'take a stand, lend a hand' sticker (purchased by the PTO).

4th grade

This week in classroom guidance, 4th graders discussed the difference between a bully, bystander, and target/victim and read "Nobody Knew What to Do: A Story about Bullying." Through discussion questions from the book, "That's My Story Too!" students spent a lot of time on what a bystander is, reasons why people stand by and let things happen that they know is wrong, and most importantly- all the ways they can 'speak up' without having to necessarily say something directly to the individual that is bullying. The extension activity in the "That's My Story Too!" book was then used, where students identified ways to 'stop' bullying and each table had the chance to read a scenario card and share with the group what they would do to solve that problem. At the end of the lesson students had the opportunity to sign the pledge banner against bullying and receive a copy of the cyberbullying activity book from Positive Promotions (purchased by the PTO).