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Anti-Bullying Activities | Anti-Bullying Lesson Plans

 

School violence is an issue in the news and on the minds of educators and administrators alike. Education World takes a look at the problem of bullying and how to stop it.
 

LESSON PLANS AND STRATEGIES

Lesson Plan Booster: What Message Do Movies Send About Bullying?
Students will examine several films that depict acts of bullying and discuss whether (and how) the characters addressed the problem. Students also will learn about the bystander actions that targets of bullying report are most helpful.

Speak Up: A Video Lesson on Bullying
Students in grades 6-12 watch Cartoon Network's "Speak Up" video on bullying, take structured notes, answer questions and participate in related class discussion.

Public Speaking Lesson: The Impact of Bullying
Students in grades 9-12 gain public speaking and presentation skills as they educate peers about the important topic of bullying.

Lesson Plan Booster: How Can Students Help a Bullied Peer?
This discussion guide for middle- and high-school students helps youth consider the impact of bullying on the school as a whole, and learn about safe ways to help a student who has been mistreated.

Bullying and Liability: What Schools Should Know
Could your school be sued over bullying? This primer explains how schools can avoid legal trouble while preventing peer mistreatment.

Life Lessons
When dealing with bullying in your classroom, be sure that every act of discipline provides an opportunity for bullies to discover their own compassion and develop it as they would a muscle.

Student-Written Books Spread Anti-Bullying Message
No one is more knowledgeable about the causes and consequences of bullying than bullies and their targets. Two anti-bullying books written by middle school students aim to help peers and younger students realize the importance of speaking out against bullying.

Stop Bullying Now!
For many years, bullying was seen as a necessary evil -- an unpleasant, but unavoidable, rite of childhood. Ignore it, we thought, and eventually it will go away. The problem hasn't gone away, though, and educators can no longer afford to ignore it. Included: Ten activities for teaching kids about empathy, anger management, and effective conflict resolution.

Mix It Up at Lunch Day Teaches Tolerance
Last year, more than 8,000 schools participated in Mix It Up at Lunch Day, an event in which students gain new understandings -- and friends -- by eating with kids with whom they might not otherwise connect. Included: Three schools Mix It Up experiences.

Teaching @ Tolerance
These lessons -- perfect for Bullying Awareness Week, recognizing Martin Luther King Day, or any other time -- are designed to teach kids about tolerance. Included: Lessons on stereotyping, appreciating differences, recognizing how words can hurt (or heal), and more.


Psychologist Dr. Ken Shore, author of Bullying Prevention: A Comprehensive Schoolwide Approach, is writing a 10-part series on bullying in schools for Education World. Click the links below to read more.

Dealing with Bullies
Strategies teachers and administrators can use to deal with bullying and to prevent it.

Understanding School Bullying
What exactly is "bullying"?

Bullying Myths
A look at the lies -- and the truth -- about bullying.

A Bullying Prevention Program
Discover steps you should take to implement a bullying prevention program in your school.

Bully-Proofing Your Classroom
Teaching strategies you can use to bully-proof your classroom.

Understanding the Bully
Bullies are made -- which means they can be unmade.

Dealing with Bullying Incidents
Dealing with those incidents to avoid their spinning out of control.

Dealing with Victims
Just as bullies warrant your attention, so too do their victims.

Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying is a growing form of bullying, one that schools must deal with.

Read more of Dr. Shore's series, The ABCs of Bullying Prevention.


 
Teaching Citizenship's Five Themes Activities
From the editors of Weekly Reader, these lessons can help develop K-6 students' understanding of the five citizenship themes -- honesty, compassion, respect, responsibility, and courage.

Students "Stand Tall" Against Bullying
In a proactive attempt to squelch "bullying" behavior before it even emerges, one school district embraced an anti-bullying theme. Students were encouraged across the ages and the curriculum to avoid bullying behaviors and to help the victims.

Sports4Kids: Reforming Recess by Teaching the Rules of Play
Is recess the most harried time of your day? A time when fights and visits to the nurse's office skyrocket? Before you eliminate recess, consider these principals’ thoughts about Sports4Kids, a program that has reformed their playgrounds and restored order to recess.

Lace Up Against Bullying
Two students become upset when they learn that a new classmate was bullied for wearing shoelaces with unusual colors. They put their heads together to create a unique plan that rallies everyone in their school to take a stand against bullying.

Using Literature to Teach About Bullying
Joanne Hughes, who teaches at Covert Avenue Elementary School in Elmont, New York, submitted this week's lesson, in which students use literature to learn about different types of bullying and different ways of dealing with them.

Ending Bullying by Teaching Kids Not To Be Victims
Bullying and teasing are part of life, says psychologist Izzy Kalman, so rather than trying to stamp out bullying, educators and parents need to teach children how to deal with bullying; that is, how not to be victims.

Bullying Intervention Strategies That Work
"Bullying," according to noted expert Dan Olweus, "poisons the educational environment and affects the learning of every child." Learn what you can do to keep bullying behavior from poisoning your school. Included: Practical tips for changing the behavior of bullies and their victims.

Creating School-Wide Anti-Bullying Strategies
Approaches to reducing bullying often focus on the conflicts among specific children. But what school counselor Stan Davis advocates and practices is a school-wide anti-bullying approach that encourages and outlines respectful behavior as well as consistent consequences.

Students Clean Up Their Act and "Dare Not To Swear!"
At Bremerton (Washington) High School, the student-generated "Dare Not To Swear!" program has proven that students can be even more effective in reducing swearing than teachers. Included: Two schools approaches, plus Dare Not To Swear! poetry.

Mixing It Up to Make New Friends
During the third Mix It Up at Lunch Day sponsored by Tolerance.org, students across the U.S. were urged to have lunch with students outside their immediate circle of friends. The event is designed to break down social boundaries at schools.

Playground Pass Creates Recess Success
If you've done recess duty, you know the playground is not all fun and games! Wouldn't you love a simple, straightforward teaching tool that steers students away from trouble and into recess success? The Playground Pass does just that.

Sticks and Stones and Names Can Hurt You: De-Myth-tifying the Classroom Bully!
Bullies are raised in the home, but their victims are too frequently created in the classroom. Learn how what you believe about bullies can hurt your students! Included: Ten myths about bullies, and the research that helped identify those myths.
 

MORE FROM EDUCATION WORLD'S ARCHIVE
 

Join the Discussion on Bullying
Our educator community featured a lively discussion on the topic of bullying. Learn about best practices and jump into the conversation.

Creating a Safe and Connected School Climate
The following excerpt shows teachers and administrators how to create a safe and connected school climate while concurrently implementing a threat assessment program.

Bullying and Cyberbullying: Six Things Teachers Can Do
Author Franklin Schargel offers common-sense advice that empowers educators to reduce future occurrences of bullying and peer mistreatment.

Simple Advice Takes Aim at Bullying
Here are three key tips for administrators, teachers and parents to prevent bullying and make school a safer and happier place.

Bullying Prevention: What Your School May be Missing
In this excerpt from Bullied Teacher: Bullied Student, Les Parsons explains how school bullying prevention approaches fall short.

Bullying Prevention: Understanding Adult Bullying
Part 2 of our excerpts from Bullied Teacher, Bullied Student address adult bullying and how it can impact a school’s culture.

Facebook Joins Team to Banish Bullying
The partnership calls for Facebook and Time Warner to use their clout to raise awareness about online bullying and encourage more people to report abuses when they see them.

Free Bullying Prevention Training for Bus Drivers
The National Association for Pupil Transportation and U.S. Dept. of Education's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools made free professional training available to the school bus industry.

When is Bullying a Hate Crime?
This provocative piece, contributed by EducationWorld guest columnists Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, dispels common myths about bullying.

The Best Bullying Prevention Schools Aren’t Doing
We forget to examine the underlying causes of student bullying, says teacher educator and bullying expert Dr. Lyn Mikel Brown. Educators and kids need to get beyond talk of “perpetrators” and “victims” and embrace the complexity that characterizes student-to-student mistreatment.

Stan Davis: Ask Bullied Kids What Helps Them
Bullying prevention expert Stan Davis reminds us that if we want to know what helps kids who have been bullied, we need to ask them. Often the typical adult advice, such as “pretend the bullying doesn’t bother you,” actually does more harm than good.

Improv Team Acts to Curb Violent Behavior
Imagine being able to freeze the action in a dispute, step out of the "scene," and get feedback on your next move. The Urban Improv troupe lets students do that, and helps them see the non-violent approaches to resolving conflict.

Don't Get Even; Get Help!: Support for Victims of Bullies
Education World continues its week-long exploration of bullying with a story about students in one Canadian school who decided to do something about bullying in their school. They help victims of bullies deal with the problem in nonviolent ways -- and to help victims and others learn how to solve the problem.

Ten Web Sites for Exploring Conflict Resolution in the Classroom
Education World offers ten sites that provide a wide range of practical materials for supporting and instituting conflict resolution programs in our schools.

Striving to Make Peer Mediation More Effective
Peer mediation programs have shown themselves to be effective in reducing student conflicts, but now advocates are working to make them more successful and easier to implement.

A Child's Plea Becomes an Adult's Crusade
Jodee Blanco's school career was not a series of joyous milestones, but a years-long sentence of misery. Blanco talks with Education World about her book, which details her harsh treatment at the hands of bullies, and her current efforts to help schools stop bullying.

Bully-Proof Your School
Recognized as more than just a problem between kids, schools are called upon to put forth a team effort to end bullies' longtime reign of terror.

Stop Bullying Before It Starts!
Bullying is no longer seen as the norm in the school or the community at large, and prevention has become the name of the game. Included: Poor and good solutions to bullying.

Taking the Bully By the Horns
All kids know how to recognize bullies -- or do they? Taking the Bully by the Horns, written by Kathy Noll and Jay Carter, teaches kids how to spot a bully, how to recognize bully "games" -- and how not to play.

Picture Books Help Kids Handle Anger and Bullying
This week, Education World reviews Bullies and Gangs, The Ant Bully, and When Sophie Gets Angry -- Really, Really Angry... These three new picture books support classroom discussions of anger, bullying, violence, and tolerance.

One Character Education Program That Works!
Many schools, lacking the time and resources required to develop their own character education curricula, are instead turning to established programs that have proven successful in other school districts. Read about one such program -- recently adopted by schools in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania -- in which the whole community is involved.

Is Character Education the Answer?
As incidents of in-school violence become more common, and strict disciplinary techniques and increased security measures fail to control the problem, many parents, educators, politicians, and social leaders are looking for reliable methods of prevention. Is character education the answer?