Anti Bullying

It's getting to the point of the year where everyone could use a reminder of how to treat others in school. My grade partner and I decided to start an anti-bullying unit in first grade. We have so many great ideas of what to do with our classes! Today, we started off by talking about friends. We had a class discussion on what it means to be a friend, how to make friends, and how to be a good friend. We watched a video on BrainPOP Jr. to get our brains thinking about friends.

Click HERE to watch a video on friends

Then my kiddies sat in a circle and they each shared one way they can be a friend to someone else. After they all shared, they wrote 2 ways they can be a friend on 2 separate strips of paper. Once everyone was done, I took their paper strips and made a chain out of them. We are going to connect our chain to the chain the other first grade class made and hang it in the hallway between our classrooms.

For our second day of anti-bullying, we focused our discussion on ways to talk to friends. I told students to think of things they could say to someone that would make them feel good and smile. I had a few students share things they would say. Then we looked at a list of sentences I had on the board, called Sparkle Statements. The kiddies read over the statements and each shared their favorite one. After sharing their favorite one, they wrote it on a cut out of a star. I added glitter to the outside of their stars to make them sparkle. When the glue dried, I hung them in the classroom as a constant reminder of how we should talk to each other.

For the third day of anti bullying activities, we continued our conversation about nice things we can say to our classmates. I introduced the word compliment and we discussed what a compliment is and why we would give people compliments. We all learned that you can give someone a compliment to make them smile and feel good about themselves. I had students think of compliments and we shared a few on the carpet. Then I told students they are going to write compliments for everyone in our class by creating posters. I had each student get a piece of construction paper and write their name in the center and draw their face. Then they each got a marker and sat in their seat to get ready to write their compliments. Students rotated around the room, writing one compliment on each person's poster. They had so much fun writing positive things about their classmates! Once they were all done and everyone wrote a compliment for each person, I let students go back to their own seat and read what was on their poster. It was so cute to see all of their smiling faces as they read what their classmates think of them!

Now that I know my kiddies know how to give each other compliments, I decided to read a book called Friends to the End. It talked about friendship and why we have friends. After that, I read Yes We Can! In this story, animals were laughing at each other because of what they weren't able to do and the animals were all upset. Then the mother comes over and suggests the animals focus on what they can do. The animals end up happy once they talk about and celebrate what they are able to do. After the story, I had students think of why they are special and what they can do. We all sat in a circle and shared one thing they are able to do.