Grade 8 – Bullying Prevention Toolkit – Language Arts
By the time middle school students are in Grade 8 they have more than likely personally felt the impact of bullying. It is because of this that I feel like a Language Arts Learning Plan on the kinds of bullying, the impact of bullying on individuals and ultimately, the ways in which youth can educate themselves and others on how not to be a bully or a bystander would be particularly relevant. This learning plan would culminate the week prior to Pink Shirt Day, which is an officially recognized day to promote the awareness of the impact of bullying in schools, and occurs on the last Wednesday of February every year. The students would be tasked with creating anti-bullying posters to display around the school in areas where bullying happens frequently. Students would have discovered this information through a mapping exercise and survey exercise to glean authentic data from the real experiences of students attending the school. As an alternative to creating an anti-bullying poster, the students could have the choice of creating a video to be shown at an anti-bullying assembly. The video could illustrate one or all of the four main types of bullying; verbal, physical, social and cyber. This video could also be shown to other groups that may be interested in knowing about where bullying takes place in the school environment or who are interesting in the student’s perspective on bullying in their school in general. These stakeholder groups might include the principle, counsellors and other school educators (including E.A.’s who monitor the hallways and school yards at lunch) or might include parent groups. This unit acknowledges the funds of knowledge that students have with regards to bullying behaviours in their school and with their age group and understands that authentic youth involvement is the key for real change to happen.
Grade8_LessonPlan_Bullying_Nov2019_PDF