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Student ideas to address bullying

Bully prevention initiatives led by students have a more positive and lasting effect than those led by ‘authority’ figures such as teachers, school counsellors and parents/carers. During this lesson, students will be engaged in whole-school action planning to promote respectful relationships within their school community.

Year Level

7-10

Duration

60 minutes

Type

  • In class activity

SEL Competencies

  • Social awareness
  • Responsible decision-making
  • Relationship skills

Learning Intention

Students will be able to engage in whole-school action planning to make a difference and to encourage and promote respectful relationships.

Key Outcomes

By the end of the lesson, students will be able to:

  • understand key messages for raising awareness and changing bullying behaviour
  • develop different audience and communication strategies for promoting respectful relationships.

ACTIVITY 01

Class vote: Bullying messages 15 min

  1. Place around the classroom separate pieces of butcher’s paper with the following topic headings:
    • Recognising and responding to bullying behaviour
    • Assertive communication
    • Bystander behaviour
    • Helping a friend who is experiencing bullying
    • Where to go for help, support and advice.
  2. Ask students to move around the room from poster to poster, recording key messages they recall about each topic.
  3. Once all ideas are recorded, allocate students to each poster to group the messages and remove any duplicates.
  4. Use a dot voting process to identify the five messages the class feels are most important for reducing bullying behaviour and promoting respectful relationships in their school community.

Dot voting process

  • Each student is given five coloured adhesive dots. They must use the dots to ‘vote’ for their selection. They can use their five dots individually to select five different options, or they can ‘pool’ their votes – for example, using all five dots for one option if they feel it’s the most important.
  • The options with the greatest number of votes are selected as the most important/relevant.

Related Resources

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