Fifth Grade Anti-Bullying Activities

The fifth graders have been hard at work learning about bullying and what they can do to stop it. Each class council begins with a randomly selected fifth grader taking charge of the SmartBoard and leading a review of bullying concepts. Almost every student has their hand raised for every question! Many of the kids want to do extra activities to learn more about bullying and share what they have learned. After playing a game about bullying prevention during a lunch group, a couple of fifth graders came up with the idea of creating a bullying-themed Jeopardy game for class councils and offered to give up some recess time to help create it. Several other kids have been using their recess time to create a bulletin board that illustrates how bullying feels, the four types of bullying (verbal, physical, social, intimidation), how to tell if a situation is bullying (it's on purpose to hurt, happens over and over, and involves an imbalance of power), and what to do (tell an adult right away!) Here are close-ups of the bulletin board materials:

The Four Types of Bullying

You know it's bullying if . . .

it's on purpose to hurt

it happens over and over

and involves an imbalance of power

How bullying feels . . .

Friendship Wishes

One of the good things about having so few girls in fifth grade is that we can easily fit all 13 at once for girls' group time. Each of the girls anonymously shared a friendship wish for this year, and have been making "Our Friendship Wishes" posters for their classrooms and the counseling office.

Here are their wishes:

• to be friends with some of the new kids
• to make a lot of friends
• to play with all of my friends this year
• to have more friends
• to make a new friend
• to be with everyone in 5th grade
• to meet a good friend
• to make more friends than last year
• to make lots of friends this year
• to get my best friend back
• that all my friends do not get bullied by other people
  
• to get along with everyone
• to make a ton of friends
  

5th Grade Book Group

Fifth graders Emily and Jessica very kindly invited me to join their book group with Mrs. Vielleux to read Mockingbird by Kathryn Erskine. Mockingbird is beautifully and realistically told from the perspective of 11-year-old Caitlin, who has Asperger's syndrome. None of us were able to stick to the nightly page assignments; the book is so good that we all "illegally" read ahead!

We had great conversations about how it must feel to think and perceive the social world so differently than most of us do. The girls learned a lot about Asperger's and the challenges that kids with Asperger's face. They showed a lot of empathy for Caitlin and rooted for her as she learned how to make a friend, deal with bullying, and help herself and her father heal after a tragedy. They also had questions for me about how I work with kids with Asperger's and if I do some of the same things that Caitlin's school counselor, Mrs. Brooks, does. (The answer was yes!).

Mockingbird provided the girls great background for our 5th grade class council unit on bullying. This week we started talking about invisible differences (differences that are not readily obvious to peers) and Jessica and Emily were able to share a lot of information about how kids with Asperger's might be at risk of being targets for bullying. And guess what! Now other kids are interested in reading this wonderful book. We highly recommend it to parents too!

Bullying = Danger!

The fifth graders started a unit on bullying in class councils this week. We learned that . . .

Bullying = Danger!

A situation is bullying if it . . .

• is on purpose to hurt

• happens over and over

• involves an imbalance of power

Because bullying is dangerous, you must ALWAYS tell an adult about it, whether it's happening to you or to someone else. Bullying is NOT something kids can solve for themselves. If the adult doesn't believe you or tells you to solve it yourself, tell them, "We're always supposed to tell when it's bullying. I know this is bullying because it's on purpose to hurt, it happens over and over, and there's an imbalance of power."

After learning how to tell if a situation is bullying, the fifth graders watched some video clips and analyzed the bullying behaviors they had noticed. Their ability to think deeply about what was happening and their empathy for the bullying targets in the movie were impressive. Many of them spoke right up about how they would have helped if they had witnessed the bullying.

Over the course of the unit we will learn about the different types of bullying, why people bully, what to do if you: are being bullied; see someone being bullied; are the friend of someone who is bullying; or are bullying someone else. Stay tuned for more information and student work samples!