THEME: CHOOSE RESPECT
Welcome to Anti-Bullying Week 2024, where young learners are encouraged to Choose Respect through playful and meaningful activities. This planner includes engaging stories, hands-on tasks, and group discussions that help children explore kindness, friendship, and embracing differences. It is very useful in creating a caring, inclusive classroom environment.
Day 1: Monday – “What is Respect?”
- Circle time: Read aloud a story about kindness and respect, Discuss key themes around sharing, listening, and being considerate of others. Sing a song about respecting others (feel free to make up yours)
- Class Activity: Colour “Respectful Actions”: Provide children with templates of paper and crayons to illustrate respectful actions they have seen or can do (e.g., helping a friend, sharing toys etc).
- Group Activity: “Respect Matching”: Use cards with pictures of respectful behaviors (like helping, sharing, or listening) and words that describe them. Children match the pictures with the corresponding words in small groups.
Day 2: Tuesday – “Odd Socks Day: Celebrate Our Differences”
- Circle Time: Encourage children to wear odd socks to school. Organise a parade where each child can showcase their socks and explain why they chose them.
- Classroom Activities. Learn about how we all have things that make us unique. Learn the Safeglia – “We Are Different. That’s Okay” song here https://safegliaconsult.com/we-are-different-thats-okay-song/
- Group Activity: We Are All Unique and special. Engage the children in a circle discussion about how everyone is unique. Use prompts to highlight their own differences like hair colour, height difference, and ask them to list as many differences as they can. Show them how each uniqueness makes the classroom colourful and special. Explain how no one should be looked down on because of their looks. Encourage them to complement each other’s differences.
Day 3: Wednesday – “Bullying and Respect”
- Circle Time: Discuss the concept of respect and what it means to be a respectful friend. Simplify the aspects of bullying behaviour: hurtful, intentional, repetitive, and power imbalance. Use scenarios like “Is it kind if someone takes your toy every time?” to help children differentiate between bullying and relational conflicts.
- Classroom Lesson: Practising Respectful Behaviour. Set classroom “respect rules” such as “We are kind,” “We include others,” and “We ask nicely before we play with toys.” Role-play respectful behaviour by demonstrating scenarios where children invite each other to play, ask to share toys, or express feelings calmly.
- Handson activity: Start a “Respect chain” where each child shares one respectful thing they did or saw that day. Write these on colourful strips of paper to create a visual respect chain that grows throughout the week. Make it stretch across a class wall or bulletin board.
Day 4: Thursday – “Teamwork & Friendship”
- Circle Time: Storytelling and Empathy Building. Read age-appropriate books/stories about kindness, sharing, and respect. Use dolls or puppets to act out stories showing both kind and unkind behaviours. Discuss the feelings of the characters giving and receiving the respect.
- Classroom Lesson: Ground Rules for Playtime. Establish clear playtime rules that encourage inclusivity and respect. Use language that avoids labels, focusing on positive behaviour choices rather than referring to any child as a “bully.”
- Hands-on Activity: “Bracelet Exchange”. Guide children in making simple friendship bracelets with string and paper. Once completed, have them exchange bracelets with a partner, sharing why they appreciate each other.
Day 5: Friday – Bullying and Emotions
- Circle Time: Group Discussion on Emotions. Encourage children to talk about how they feel when they are happy, sad, or upset. Use visuals of facial expressions to help children identify and express different emotions that bullying behaviour can cause. Ask children to share how they would feel if someone did not let them play or took their toy away.
- Classroom Lesson: How Bullying Makes Us Feel. Teach children to identify emotions linked to bullying. Through a story about bullying, children can pause to discuss characters’ feelings, connecting these to emotion flashcards like sad, scared, or happy. They then share personal experiences, expressing how unkind and kind behaviours make them feel. This helps build empathy and emotional awareness.
- Hands-on Activities: Emotion Playdough Faces activity, children mould playdough into faces showing various emotions. They share their creations, explaining personal experiences with these feelings, connecting them to the story’s characters.
End of Week Event. Activities that can be assigned a week prior to be presented at an after-school Anti-Bullying Week event on Friday:
- Have children make and wear different “Respect Badges” they made in their different classes
- Review what they learned during the week, remind them of Odd Socks Day, sing the Safeglia “We Are Different. That’s Okay” song
- Showcase a Class “Friendship Tree”: Use a large paper tree on a bulletin board. Have each child add a leaf with their name and a respectful act they performed during the week. Have them talk about it.
Parent Involvement
- Send home a note outlining your classroom’s approach to Anti-Bullying Week, encouraging parents to discuss respect and kindness with their children.
- Invite parents to share any observations and help reinforce positive behaviour by modelling respect, kindness and encouraging empathy at home.
- Feel free to invite parents to enjoy your read aloud sessions with you.
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