“A bully is an individual who tends to torment others, either through verbal harassment or physical assaults, or through more subtle methods of coercion.” according to www.wikipedia.org.
Childhood bullying is not new to society, it has been happening since the beginning of time. Often children are told how to behave appropriately at home, school, and in the community but often witness many situations that are not aligned with what they are being told.
For example, a child who is told that calling someone stupid is not an appropriate word to use for describing a fellow classmate, may respond with what’s the big deal, it is a joke and/or names can not hurt you. Remember the old school rhyme of “Stick and stones may break your bones but names will never hurt you.” That school rhyme is incredibly inaccurate, a stick may break a bone but in weeks or months it will heal with little or no indication that it was injured. However, the negative names a child is called will become a part of them and wreak havoc on their self-image.
Childhood Verbal Bullying Lesson Plan
Purpose: To illustrate to students how names do cause harm to living things.
Why do the Lesson: Students need to see things to think it is true. A child name calling cannot see the harm it is causing because they are invisible scars. A child witnesses the world behaving badly and being successful so why are they not allowed to participate in adult behavior. It is important for all students to participate in this activity.
Materials: 3 glass jars with lids, 9 cups of cooked rice
Time: 1 month
Procedure: Place 3 cups of cooked rice in each glass jar and screw on the lid.
Place all glass jars in the same spot.
Label each of the jars, the first jar is labeled love, the second jar has a blank label, and the third jar is labeled dumb.
Before the lesson have students predict what will happen to each of the jars of rice and how the jars of rice would feel if they could verbalize their words. Often children are not able to verbalize their words like rice to illustrate their pain.
Each day students’ will speak loving words to the jar that is labeled love such as you are a great friend, thanks for the pencil, that was a great idea. The jar that has a blank label will be ignored, not giving a second thought, and the third jar will be yelled at, made fun of, and criticized. Common sayings for the third jar are you’re an idiot, you can do better than that, what were you thinking stupid, you are a loser.
Also, have students all talk to the jars of the rice except for the rejected rice. Often students will reject a child and say that they are not unkind but rejection has a strong impact on the child’s self-image.
It does not matter that the jars are close together because bullying occurs in front of peers who are not bullied.
Each week the students will observe what happens to the rice, write a brief description of its physical characteristics. At the end of the experiment students write a report on the effects of name calling and why or why not this type of behavior is acceptable or unacceptable.
Extensions: To illustrate the effects of cyber bullying. Only write notes to the jars of rice and tape the notes on the jar.
Use plants or seedlings instead of the cooked rice.
