The GLSEN website was very interesting to explore. The first place I went on the site was the ThinkB4YouSpeak link. This was a great site that included educational guides, and campaign material that you could print off. It gave definitions of the words gay, faggot, and dyke. To be honest, I didn't even know that those words had other meanings previous to describing homosexuals. I think that is something that should be taught to kids. It needs to be brought to the attention of everyone that these words are hurtful to some people, and even if the are not directed at them, using phrases like "that's so gay" can really afftect them. On this site, one part that caught my eye was the tally of how many people use the words "fag, "dyke" and "so gay" in one day on twitter. I was astonished to see that the word "fag" was seen more than 1500 times on twitter today. This tally just goes to show how often these words are being used in our society.
The next part I investigated was the Stop Bullying Now! site. Bullying does not just happen with the LGBT population, it seems to happen with a lot of kids. Someone could be bullied for wearing glasses or being short. It is whoever other children decide to pick on. Therefore, it is important to teach the chil
dren about bullying. This was a neat site for children and adults to use to teach and learn about bullying. They have the definition of bullying and things you can do if you are bullying or being bullied, little clips that talk about bullying scenarios that can be used to teach about bullying, along with discussion questions to go along with each clip. These would be great to use with elementary aged students as they are cartoons with characters and such. On this site there are also games that the kids can play with the characters. There are a lot of situations both inside and outside of school with kids bullying and being bullied and it is important that children know what do if it happens to them. I know in my system the guidance counselor does a few lessons about bullying in each classroom, and I think this site along with the lesson plan on GLSEN.com would be a great tool to supplement her lessons.After looking at the GLSEN site a bit, I was interested to see what other kinds of sites were out there about bullying. Coincidently, I stumbled upon a blog about bullying statistics . On this blog there are statistics about bullying, personal stories and and quite a few videos, describing various bullying instances and the effects of bullying today. In one of the clips from abc news it talks about bullying in the media, such as "Mean Girls" and the sad story about boy who committed suicide because he was depressed and being harrassed. Suicide is an extreme effect that bullying can have on a person's life. Children need to know that there are people they can talk to, or what to do if they are being bullied.
I also found this site through pbs, which might be nice for kids to explore. It describes the different types of bullying, what it is, what to do, what other kids have to say about bullying, and they can play the "beat the bully" game.
I thought this site on kids health might also be a good one to look at. Aside from bullying it targets peer pressure, gossip, cliques, self-esteem, abuse, dealing with anger etc.
Here are a couple of sites that give lesson plans and activities that you can do with you students to teach them about bullying.
Grades 1-2
Grades 3-4
What to teach kids about bullying
I visited this website you had given a hyperlink for, http://kidshealth.org/kid/feeling/emotion/bullies.html.
ReplyDeleteThere was a great link that was called, "What Kids Have to Say." There were links to various questions that kids were asked to answer. I think this website would be great to use in the classroom for kids to surf. The website covers the various issues that children deal with everyday. Great resource!
This year many of my second grade students are being bullied or are bullying others. Often, they do not even realize that they are doing it to one another! We have been teaching a unit on self-esteem, respecting others, and what is a bully as well as how we should react to a bully. This is information that we need to teach clearly to our students. We cannot expect them to know that are acting as bullies or know what to do when they are bullied. Respecting others is a huge topic for our younger children in elementary school and I think that a lot more time and energy should be spent on this topic than what actually does. It is too often an enrichment or supplemental area when it may be just as important as teaching our kids the core content areas, such as reading, writing, and math.
ReplyDeleteI also visited the Stop Bullying Now! website and I thought it had a lot of good resources educators can use in thier classrooms and schools. The ThinkB4YouSpeak website also had great lesson plans and resources to use.
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