Classroom Activities

Know Your Neighbour

Your classroom is really a special kind of neighbourhood. It’s a place where people from many different backgrounds share many experiences. It’s like a small community in which you meet the same people day after day. You and your classmates work and play together, just as neighbours often do. In fact you spend more time with your classroom neighbours, than your community neighbours, friends or family! Because of this, there’s all the more reason to get along and have a classroom full of respect and kindness.

Some of the people in your class may be your best friends. There may be others whom you don’t know as well. Some you may not know at all. But no matter how well you know each other, all of you - and all the students in your school - have something important that you can share with each other.

Get to know your classroom neighbours better. Work with your teacher to develop a class project that will help you and your classmates find out more about each other. Tell your teacher about this website – http://www.educationworld.com/back_to_school/index.shtml#icebreaker - where he or she can find lots of fun activities for starting a new school year and getting to know each other better.

Once you have all gotten to know each other better, you can work together on some projects that will make your school safer. The whole class can write down some questions that everybody can answer about safety in the school. Find out where students feel unsafe at school, in the schoolyard and the neighbourhood. Try to figure out how these safety issues started and why they are continuing. Then, work together to come up with ideas on how to make the school safer.

You could:
• work with your teacher to make a set of classroom rules and steps to follow when you feel angry at someone, are being bullied or see someone being bullied
• put together a team of older students and teachers to monitor the areas where students feel unsafe
• create posters or banners on safety issues in your school with solutions on how to deal with them
• talk to other teachers or the principal about having a school-wide safety project
• make safety announcements on the PA system
• have students report “good news” stories when they witness someone standing up to a bully or helping a victim and give our prizes to students who are helpful bystanders all the time
• make announcements on the PA system about ways students are helping each other and making your school safer

Class Action

Ask your teacher to work with your class to produce your own list of places to go and people to call in case you are ever in trouble. Think about all the different situations in which you might need help. Talk with your classmates about what they would do and whom they would call. Find out how to get assistance right away when you need it.

As you locate names, addresses, and phone numbers of people who can help in an emergency, you and your classmates can make a big wall poster listing them for everyone to see. Each of you can also make your own list to keep in your notebook, so that you would have it if you ever needed it.

Accepting Differences

It is important that we accept everyone. We don’t have to be friends with everyone we meet, but we must accept their differences and avoid hurting or ignoring people because they are not the same as we are.

1. As a class, make a giant collage of faces. Use magazines and the Internet. Show the beauty of all different kinds of people.

2. Write stories about being the new kid at an “alien” school. You are very different from everyone else and all the kids make fun of you. Describe how you solve your problem and how you became friends with the students at the alien school!

3. There are lots of good stories about kids who are different and how they learn to celebrate those differences. Even Harry Potter is different from all the other students at Hogworts! You’ll find lots of stories in your school or public library, such as Pinky and Rex and the Bully by James Howe, Third Grade Bullies by Elizabeth Levy, Nothing Wrong with a Three-Legged Dog by Graham McNamee or My Brother Bernadette by Jacqueline Wilson. Read these books together as a class and discuss how the characters dealt with their differences. Or read them on your own and write a book report describing what happened because of the characters differences, how they dealt with them or advice you would give them.

Having Fun, Staying Safe

Staying safe is serious business, but that doesn’t mean it can’t also be fun. Try to think of games and other fun activities that could help you learn about safety and about how to handle situations that could become violent.

One game that might be fun uses a map of your school neighbourhood as the board. To start, draw all the buildings and streets in the neighbourhood on a big piece of poster paper. Circle and number all the areas where trouble has occurred or where you think it could occur.

Pick a circle on the map and then divide the class into two teams. The first team has to make up a story about a problem that could occur in the circled area. Perhaps it’s a place where those who bully hang out and threaten people. It could also be a place where a lot of fights have taken place in the past. Think of all the different ways in which trouble could develop in the area.

The second team would then have to describe how they would deal with those problems. Afterwards, both teams could work together to think of even more ways to avoid trouble in that spot.

Write your ideas down in a notebook. After you have covered all the areas circled on the map, review your book of ideas with your teacher and principal and work with them and your parents to find even more ways to make your school and your neighbourhood safer.

Poetry, Plays and Pictures

Drawing a picture, writing a poem, designing a poster, putting on a play, taking a photograph or writing a song can help us come up with different ways to deal with bullying. For example you could:

• tell a story about how you feel about your school and making it a safer place for you and your friends
• write a rap, rock and roll or blues song about bullying
• take photographs of places where violence occurred in the past
• write a story about how violence affected someone you know
• work with some friends to write and put on a play about how trouble was avoided at your school.

Whatever project you decide to do, the important thing is to show it to, or share it with, someone else. If you write a song, sing it with some friends to your class. If you make a poster, put it on the wall. Better yet, have a poster contest and put all of the posters up in the hallways. Make a photo album of the photographs you’ve taken and share it with other classes in your school. Take it home to show your parents and neighbours as well. You can even share it with another school, either in your own neighbourhood or somewhere else in the province.

Sharing your poems, songs, artwork and pictures with other schools is a good way to learn about each other and about different ways of preventing bullying. Work with your teacher and your school principal to set up an exchange program with another school outside your own community. You can send each other your writings, drawings and photographs. Find out whether you have shared some of the same problems in trying to make your schools safer. Ask the students at the other school how they deal with those problems. Tell them what you do. Thinking about the things they tell you and decide whether those things would work for you.

Whatever project you decide to do, have fun doing it! And remember that it’s important to let others know what you’ve done.

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