Is it Rude, is it Mean or is it Bullying?

I don't know about you but I grow weary of the constant reports of students being "bullied."  Now I know there are children who are truly being bullied, who are afraid to come to school, find it difficult to concentrate on their work, have no friends, and are withdrawn and depressed because of the constant abuse of a school bully.  When real bullying occurs, I am the first to advocate for any student in that situation.  I investigate each claim and I do everything I can as a School Counselor to empower and support the student targeted, involve parents and administration who address the situation from a  legal and disciplinary angle, and get help for the bully.

But, that is not what I am talking about here.  The word bullied has become a real hot button.  I know, you know what I mean.  I am talking about those students and parents who call every unpleasant exchange between students bullying.  No matter how few times or infrequently a student experiences an unkind remark, teasing, or physical interaction it is called bullying.  It is a word that is increasingly used to describe any situation where a student has gotten their feelings hurt whether intentionally or unintentionally.  Parents and students utter this word and we spring into action to investigate their report of bullying.  And because of our response, I have come to realize it is a word our students will often utilize when the attention is on them for some wrongdoing. Our students have learned they can instantly control any situation and shift the focus of teachers, and especially their parents, from their troubles if they claim they are being bullied.  What I needed was a way to educate students and their parents about the difference between conflict and bullying.

Last year I came across a wonderful article written in 2012 by Signe Whitson, Licensed Social Worker, School Counselor, author, keynote speaker and Chief Operating Officer of Life Space Crisis Intervention Institute. Many of you may be familiar with her article titled, Is it Rude, Is it Mean or Is it Bullying?  In it she explains  how everything isn't bullying and how many people have difficulty discerning what is and is not bullying.  Signe  also mentions how she first heard best selling children's author Trudy Ludwig  "talk of these distinguishing terms" and  then went on to use them in her own work.  As I read her article I thought, this is what I want my students and parents to know, so I began work on creating a set of classroom lessons.

 Along the way I ran into a bit of trouble with my students failure to comprehend the differences in these terms. So I went straight to the source and contacted Signe myself.  She responded to my email and then gave me her number and invited me to call her.  What an honor to share my experiences and ideas with her.  Signe listened to my concerns regarding my students and their struggles with her vocabulary. She directed me to her website resource page and recommended I use her forced choice activity to help my students think more critically about the definitions of rude, mean, and bullying they were learning.  I did, and they loved it!  I could see them making the connections as they moved from corner to corner in response to Signe's scenarios. They were thinking and questioning and arguing convincingly about how some situations might be mean rather than rude and it would depend on how it was said to a person.  I could see their point.  They were  internalizing the concepts and questioning the dynamics of the scenarios.  It was truly exciting!

My students and have have enjoyed these lessons on "Is it Rude, Is it Mean or Is it Bullying?" Below you will find a brief outline of the 5 lessons I have created, my activity forms and PowerPoint too. I based these lessons on the work of Signe Whitson. I publish them here to share with you with her permission. Please visit Signe Whitson's website for more information about her work on bullying and aggression.

LESSON PLAN FORMS and OVERVIEW  
Click here for  Rude, Mean, Bully lesson plans 
Pre/post test (non-tech option)
Kahoot! link 
Rude vs. Mean vs. Bully PowerPoint
Inappropriate Behaviors Brainstorming sheet
Signe  Whitson's Forced Choice Activity
Rude, Mean, Bully Behavior Statements

Lessons 1:  The pre-test.  For those with technology resources I have created a Kahoot!
(website for game-based learning) for gathering pre/post test data.  I have also include a "non-tech" option (paper and pencil) for those who do not have access to technology.

Lesson 2: A PowerPoint introduction to the rude, mean and bullying vocabulary and a brainstorming activity on thinking of examples of things that are rude, mean, and bullying.

Lesson 3:  Forced Choice Scenarios from Signe Whitson's website resource page.

Lesson 4:  Divide students into groups, print one copy of the "Rude, Mean, Bullying Behavior" statement sheets, cut them up and divide them into stacks. Each group will sort and glue their stack to index cards according to which are rude, mean and bullying. Cards are shared with the class for approval and glued to chart paper to make a tree map poster for the students to take back to class.

Lesson 5:  Post-test using Kahoot! or non-tech option.

I have used these lessons with all my 3rd, 4th and 5th graders (15 classes total) and while their comprehension of the terminology is only at about 70%, there is a vast improvement over the previous number of reports we had regarding bullying. Even though my students aren't there yet, in fully understanding the definition of rude, mean and bullying, they are conscious of the differences. Now when complaints of bullying arise,  I am able to reference these lessons and help my students make a more accurate assessment of their own situation.

I hope you and your students find these lessons helpful. Keep in touch and let me know how your students respond to learning the difference in rude, mean, and bullying.
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Red Ribbon Week lessons

October is one of the busiest months of the year for School Counselors who are trying to do Red Ribbon Week and Bully Prevention all in just 31 days.  Here are two intermediate lessons I have created to teach during the month of October using a variety of information off the web and ideas from the formerly free website, HealthTeacher.com.( now $149 a year)

The first lesson called "Over the Counter and Prescription Medicine" teaches students drugs are powerful chemicals that change the way our bodies work.  These can be good or bad, illegal or legal, prescription or Over-the-Counter (OTC) or street drugs.  This lesson uses thinking maps and Kagan structures to help keep students interested, engaged and focused on the similarities and differences in prescription drugs and over the counter drugs.  I have used this lesson with 3rd, but it could easily be used with 4th, 5th and possibly 6th with some adjustments. Depending on your discussion and use student thinking maps, this could be be two 30-45 minute lessons.  Included here is the PowerPoint and lesson plan.

The next lesson is "What do you know about drugs?"  This lesson is for my older students and I use it only with 5th grade. It is definitely a lesson that could be used with 6th -8th.  You can do this as a PowerPoint  quiz and presentation/discussion, Personal Response Clicker lesson, or as a Kahoot! lesson if you have the technology or allow students to bring their own.   The "What do you know about drugs?" PowerPoint has 15 questions which function as a pre/post test with answer key and information slides at the end of the slide show.  After giving the pre test, have groups teach the class the information about drugs from their slide(s) and maybe something they did not know or was surprising to them.  After sharing, have class take the post test on paper or perhaps do the Kahoot! This lesson can take two 30-45 minutes class sessions depending on the amount of discussion generated from the information slides.  Included here is the PowerPoint and lesson plan. If you have access to technology here is a very similar version (18 questions) of the Powerpoint on Kahoot!  you may want to try this with your students as the pre/post test.  My students always want to play Kahoot! again, so pre/post it is!

My RRW Overview

Prior to Red Ribbon Week I  give teachers an overview of the week and send home our theme and a list of dress up days to parents in English and Spanish. Two weeks before I create a large template that goes with our theme and give one per class for students to decorate and sign as their pledge to practice healthy choices and stay drug free.  These are due to me by Friday before the start of RRW so I can hang them up around the school. (Last year we did "I mustache you to be drug free.")
 After hanging up class pledges, I put ribbons and safety pins in mailboxes for teachers to pass out on Monday.  On the Monday of RRW my 5th grade Leadership students  and any of their parents who would like to help, show up an hour before school to tie red ribbons on all the poles in the parent and bus loop and all the poles outside our classrooms.  (We are  in Florida, we are an "outside" school.) Afterwards, we have a doughnut and juice breakfast before sending them off to class.

Each morning of RRW I have a short message I read on the morning news show about the history of RRW, healthy choices, peer pressure, etc.  These messages are sent to me periodically as a bonus for our purchase of the Project Wisdom program.  Due to the copyright, I am unable to share them here. However, here is a brief summary message I wrote using information off the internet from the Camarena Club to explain the reason Red Ribbon Week was started.

With more standardized testing and Common Core pressure on classroom teachers, I have severely cut back our RRW activities to just the dress up days, wearing ribbons, class pledge, my classroom lessons, and morning messages.  These are about all my faculty can handle and for these I get support.

To me, RRW is all about increasing awareness of using medication correctly and wisely, focusing on healthy choices and lifestyles, and learning to handle peer pressure. RRW is not something for I which we have any school generated data, but we know students who make good choices, lead a healthy life and resist peer pressure are going to do better in school.  Now if I could only figure out how to show that with data!

For more RRW lessons check out this link to  primary and intermediate lessons I have previously shared.

Enjoy your RRW!

Making Data Collection Fun with Kahoot!

I can't even remember when or where I first heard about Kahoot! but I've used it with my students  in the classroom and with my faculty with wonderful results. Kahoot! combines a game based format with leader or student created quizzes,challenging participants to be the first to answer questions correctly by awarding points and showing the top 5 participants on the leader board. Surveys and discussion questions can also be designed without the competitive atmosphere created by the timed quizzes and awarding of points.

Kahoot! (getkahoot.com) is a free website that can be accessed with a laptop, tablet, ipod, or smart phone.  My intern used Kahoot! with my students on our class set of ipods as a post test for a lesson she created for Red Ribbon Week.  I used it as a pre-test with my faculty before an important faculty meeting about behavior (they all brought their smart phones). Both resulted in lots of active engagement and the students were so excited, they even begged  to do the quiz again!

Not only can teachers and School Counselors write quizzes, pre/post tests and surveys for students, but students can create a Kahoot! account and make quizzes or review activities for each other.  Creating a  Kahoot! is easy and the website has lots of public Kahoots! you can copy or use as an idea for creating your own.  Your Kahoot! can have pictures or videos attached to each question and questions can be multiple choice or  true/false.  At the end of each Kahoot! is a player rating of how much they liked the Kahoot! and how much they learned. Also available to the Kahoot! creator is a download listing the names of all the participants and how they answered each question.  What a great way for School Counselors to collect some perception data!

Game pin 

Student log in with game pin

Student log in with name and ready to play.

Once you have created your Kahoot! and are ready for your students to play,  you will go to getkahoot.com, log in and select your quiz.  A screen will display giving students the game pin (the pin is not always the same).  Students must go to kahoot.it to log in and participate.  When they do, a screen will ask for the game pin and their nick name.  We had some problems with super silly  and inappropriate nicknames, so much so that it became a competition as to who could have the most ridiculous or questionable nickname. As a result we had to insist on using real names, which we needed anyway to get individual student data.  There is also a great feature with Kahoot! that allows the School Counselor the option of "kicking out" any inappropriate name. The student must then enter a more suitable name to re-join the game.  When all students have reached  the "You're in!" screen you are ready for your Kahoot! to begin.

Student screen view

Questions as they appear on the projected screen.

Students see the  class answers and the correct answer(s).

Each question will appear at the top of the projected screen with red, yellow, blue and green bars with shapes and answer choices inside.  Students will  have to read the answer choices off the screen as they only see the colored bars with shapes on their screen.The object of course is to answer as quickly and correctly as you can to earn the most Kahoots! points.  After each question the question and correct answers and the number of students selecting each answer is displayed.  The leader board  comes after each question  response summary and shows the top 5 scores so students can see how they are doing compared to their classmates.  At the end of the quiz,  the final Kahoot! scores are shown and  students give a "learning" and "fun rating."  I'm pretty sure though you will already know how much they enjoyed playing Kahoots! without the ratings screen.  And to make this fun learning experience even better, you can download results  of your Kahoot! giving you a spread sheet with student names and how they responded to each question.

The final scoreboard lets students see how their top five classmates performed.
Button to download results is at the bottom of this screen.

 My students LOVED Kahoot! and my teachers were eager to try it in their own classroom.  If you are lucky enough to have laptops, tablets, or ipods in your school then this is definitely something I recommend you try.  If your technology is limited you could have students answer questions as teams or if your school is a BYOT (bring your own technology) like ours, students can bring their own devices to use. 

My mind is spinning with ideas about how I can use Kahoot! to collect process, perception, and outcome data.  The new semester will provide a number of opportunities to follow-up on programs and lessons conducted earlier in the year.

Have you ever tried Kahoot!?   I would love to hear about your Kahoot! experiences and how you are using the data.  Please share in the comments section below.  Thanks for stopping by!