Mrs. Edmunds Class- Anti-Bullying Week in Review

This week is "Anti-Bullying" week in Ontario, Canada. My students started off the week with discussing what bullying 'truly is', as the term is often thrown around, losing it's purpose/true call for help.

During literacy, we engaged in perspective writing. Each student chose to step into the shoes of "The Bully", "The Bullied", or "The Bystander". Using Runde's Room outline, the students wrote an "I Am" Poem through each perspective.

These poems were read aloud in class. The students did a phenomenal job! It's truly amazing what they see and how many of them are able to relate to at least one or more of the perspectives. After being read, the students voted on the one that stood out most for them. These 3 students read their poems as a "PSA Announcement" for the school on the P.A. the following day.

Very powerful lesson and reading.

From there, these poems were edited and revised and written in good onto a pink t-shirt cut-out. For those of you unfamiliar with the use of the 'pink shirt', it began in 2008 as a response to two boys in Nova Scotia who took a stand against bullying by supporting a boy who was bullied for wearing a pink shirt to school.  These two boys saw the incident and went out and purchased 50 pink shirts to distribute to other boys at the school to wear.  You can read more about pink shirt day here at www.pinkshirtday.ca. Now we have "National Pink Shirt Day" to bring awareness to bullying in all of it's forms.

In addition to the poems, I also encouraged my students to think of negative words/names/actions/mean words that they hear in and around the school/schoolyard. I broke the students into small groups and had them write down these words. I brought the class back together and we reviewed the terms, calling attention to similarities, why these terms are used and what we can do. I teach at a Catholic School, so our discussions also involved befriending and helping those who are or feel marginalized, just as Jesus did.

 It's always easier to do the wrong thing, than the right thing.....
How can we do more to help those around us and create a happier place for everyone to live?

I then gave each student 1 coloured card. On this card, I asked the students to write down the word that they wanted to be remembered by in the future. Each student then walked up to the charts of negative/mean words (specifically one that they hated the most) and placed their word overtop of it.  

 Today we listened to "Mean" By Taylor Swift.

My students have been working on Author's Purpose and Audience, as well as using text support. In keeping with this, my students were provided with an "EQAO-Type" question, in reference to Taylor's Lyrics. You can pick this up HERE.

This song sparked some great conversations about why Taylor Swift wrote this song and it's purpose.

I have also been stressing the use of 'Evidence Base Terminology' when referencing text. Here's some of the lingo we've been discussing (and avoiding).

 Overall, we had a great week, evoking some great conversation!

Wishing you a great weekend!
~Kaitlin~