Bullying Lesson Resources
Anti-bullying lesson ideas
If you would like to teach some anti-bullying activities or games in the classroom and are after some ideas, have a look through the list below:
Kindness Day
Initiate a special day where the focus is being kind to each other, as well as encouraging kids to share and be involved with each other.
Find out more...
Kindness Day should involve more than the usual amount of fun activities that encourage kids to share, take turns and be involved with each other.
Things to do for Kindness Day:
- Leading up to Kindness Day, have discussions including:
- What is kindness?
- What does it mean to you?
- What is inclusiveness?
- How do we show each other we care?
- What is empathy?
- How can we make our classroom a place where everyone is kind to each other?
- Each child thinks of something they are going to do on Kindness Day that is above and beyond what they normally do. For example, bringing something from home to share with the class for the day
- Leading up to Kindness Day, as a class, come up with 500 ways to show kindness. On Kindness Day, see if the class can complete all the acts of kindness. Have a list and tick them off each time an act is complete
- After Kindness Day, have discussions with your class about what they liked about being at school on a day when they knew people were going to be kind. What were the challenges of Kindness Day? How could they maintain kindness levels in the classroom?
Pen friends
Children are paired up and spend time writing to each other about their lives, and asking questions about their ‘pen friend's’ life.
Find out more...
To encourage greater understanding between members of a class, create a post box in the classroom. Pair up children, being mindful not to put friends together, as the aim of the exercise is to create understanding and empathy for children outside of their usual circle. Children spend time writing to their pen friends about their lives, and asking questions about their partners' life. As time goes on, they could share more information such as drawing or photographs in their letters. Writing could occur on a weekly or fortnightly basis.
What should I do? game
Make a set of cards with real-life scenarios relevant to the age of your class, and as a group work out ways to solve the situation.
Find out more...
An example of a scenario is:
I used to be good friends with the people in my group and then a new person joined who didn't like me. She turned everyone against me and now when I try to play or sit with them at lunchtime they tell me to go away. Some of the kids in the group told me they DO still like me, but they are scared that if they stick up for me, the new girl will turn everyone against them too. What should I do?
Have children sit around in a circle and take turns choosing a card, reading it out loud and then asking at the end "Can you help me? What should I do?" Children then discuss ways to solve the problem.
Writing exercise
Develop laminated cards that have prompts on them about feelings, kindness and real life situations. Children can complete the prompts with an erasable marker pen and share with the group.
Find out more...
For example, children may like to think about an issue such as bullying, with prompts such as "When a friend calls me a bad name I feel..." or "If I saw someone being bullied I would..."
Story/movie viewing and discussions
Use stories, movies or TV shows to develop conversations with children and young people about bullying and its impacts, for example, exerts from Harry Potter, Billy Elliot, new Karate Kid movie.
Essay writing
Get children to write an essay on a topic relating to bullying. For example ‘If you had a million dollars, how would you use it to stop bullying?’
Hand drawing
Children draw around their own hand and write one thing on each finger that they would do to stop an act of bullying. Create an anti-bullying wall collage using everyone's hands.
Anti-bullying tree
Cut out leaf shapes and a large tree from paper. On the leaves, get children to write suggestions about how to help someone who is being bullied. Pin leaves on the tree to create the sense that ‘Together we can stop bullying!’.
'Stick together against bullying!' tower
Ask each child in the school to bring in a cardboard carton. Get children to paint cartons and write anti-bullying slogans on them, and then glue them all together to create a huge ‘tower’ sculpture.
Sorry box
Encourage kids to write anonymous notes apologising for acts of bullying or unkindness, and put them in a 'Sorry box'. Copy the notes out and paste them on a ‘Sorry’ cork board or wall.