After attending iTEACH 2005 in McCall I saw a strong correlation to terrorism and bullying.  This is a topic we cover every year in all grades, but bullying continues to prevail.  Hopefully you can use some of these lessons to identify and stop "playground terrorism." If bullying is stopped at school, students may develop some skills to prevent it off of the playground as well.

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• Lesson 1
• Define

Teacher, with student input, will write some words on the board to help describe what bullying is.

Students will break up into small groups to write their own definition of bullying, without using a dictionary.

Students will then get back together to discuss their ideas.  Teacher will hand out poster board so students can write their definition on it to display on the wall.

Teacher will then hand out dictionaries so students can compare their definition to the dictionary's.

Rather than dictionaries, teacher may use on-line references to define bullying:

Understanding Bullying (National PTA)

Stop Bullying Now  (Health and Human Resources)

Bullying and Your Child  (Kids Health for Parents)

• Lesson 2
• Discuss

• Teacher should start this lesson with discussion of court room procedure.

The teacher will divide the students into two groups:

Teacher should pick three unbiasied students to sit as judges for the discussion. 

One group will be for bullying and the other will be against bullying.  Give students some time to work on ideas and concepts to share their information with the class. 

Each group should pick one member from its group to share its conclusions.  Following discussion the judges should make their ruling.

• Lesson 3
• Brainstorm

Using the board the teacher and students should brainstorm ideas on how to create ways to stop bullying.  Try to make this a student led activity.  Have one or two students write ideas on the board to help create sense of ownership even more.  (No wrong ideas that are school appropriate.) Teacher should facilitate to keep students on task. When finished have students write ideas on poster board to display in halls or in classroom. 

• Lesson 4 and 5
• Role play/video

Divide the students into groups of 4 or 5 to write a play (role play) about bullying. Be sure and use all forms of bullying from name calling to typical playground bullying of keep away or cutting in line.  Play should use some of the methods discussed about solving bullying and how to overcome it and also the consequences of bullying.  Play should be appox. five minutes long.  Other groups will be asked to discuss the role playing to see if bullying was properly diplayed and effectivily overcome.  After students have shown their role playing to the class allow them to video tape themselves so they can evaluate what they have done.  I have rubric for this activity.

• Lesson 6
• Mentor

Be sure and schedule with teacher prior to this lesson of younger grade. 

After you feel that the students have completed a role play that adequately depicts bullying, have students become instructors of how to avoid bullying and the consquences of bullying.  Students should mentor younger students on what bullying looks like.  Have students perform role-playing with a younger grade.  Then discuss the play with the younger students.  If the students are K-2, I would suggest having some books on hand so the older students can read to the younger kids to help reinforce this concept. 

Some of the other activities of in this lesson of bullying would work with the younger students.

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	Beginning 1	Developing 2	Accomplished 3	Exemplary 4	Score
Role Playing Uses Critical Thinking Skills to Demonstrate Bullying Behavior	Role playing just demonstrates bullying behavior	While role playing, actions of bullying are evident, but not well defined	While role playing, terms and actions of bullying are evident	Multiple terms are well-defined.  Role playing demonstrates good solutions to modifying bullying behavior
Demonstrate positive Communication Skills	Positive communication skills barely evident	Repeats positive phrases learned in discussions, but by rote	Communicates positive phrases to stop the bullying	Communicates positive and creative ways to stop bullying
Teamwork is evident during Role Playing	A few students are actively involved.	Most students are actively involved and each student has some part in the role playing.	All students are equally involved, taking an active part.	All students build from each other's skills in positive and supportive ways.
Role Playing is age- appropriate for younger student audience.	After teacher redirection, skit goes smoothly with younger audience.	Role playing skit goes smoothly with younger audience.	Younger students are attentive during role playing.	Role playing skit actively engages younger students.
Meets Health Standards for Safe School Environment:  Harrassment is discouraged in all situtations	Role playing skit shows positive ways to get along with others.	Role playing skit mentions positive ways to descourage harrassment.	Role playing skit demonstrates positive solutions to discourage harrassment.	Role playing skit demonstrates positive and creative ways to discourage harrassment.

 

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Conclusion These activities are in no way conclusive, and I am sure you will find activites that you can adapt for your grade level.  I am in no way thinking that this lesson plan will end bullying.  But if we don't try, the playground bullies of our school will become the gang bullies of the neighborhood.     Please stress in your lessons that bullying can be as insignificant as name calling to extortion for lunch money as well as physical abuse and harrassment.   According to the experts, the best way to help curb bullying is the constant reinforcement and interaction with the your kids.  When interacting with the younger students, please have your kids be positive and build relationships by example.     Kindness does matter.

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