Jennifer Little
Teaching Prejudice Reduction Lesson Plans
Bullying Awareness
2011
Applied Theatre
Unit of Study:
Objectives: Students will be able to learn national data and information about the impact of bullying on school attendance and safety.
Students will be able to demonstrate empathy for all participants in bullying, including victims, bystanders and bullies.
Students will be able to explore and successfully manage techniques in handling situations that include bullying – including cyber bullying and physical bullying.
Essential Questions : Who are the players in bullying and what are their roles?
Whose lives are impacted by a bullycide?
What can we, as a community, do to make a difference in bullying?
NJ Core Standards: Theatre: 1.1.12.C.1, 1.3.12.C.1, 1.3.12.C.2 and 1.4.12.A.1
English: 3.2.12.B.4
Social Studies: 6.3.12.D.1
Lesson Activities/Learning Experiences/Procedures
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Jennifer Little 2011
Applied Theatre
Day One Activities, Procedures and Assignments:
 Students will start by brainstorming about “what is bullying?” The teacher will introduce the concepts of three “parties” involved – bully, victim and bystander. The group will discuss and learn about their roles traditionally and globally in broader sense (genocide, etc.)

Teacher shows and introduces the Bullying Circle: o Students Who Bully o Followers (or Henchmen) o Supporters (or Passive Bullies) o Passive Supporters (or Possible Bullies) o Disengaged Onlookers o Possible Defenders o Defenders o Student Who Is Bullied

Then to help the students expand the creative thinking process, the teacher will put two sheets of paper (or use the white board) with the alphabet listed vertically.
 Students will be split into two teams. They will line up and on “GO,” they will race to write one word per student next to each letter in the alphabet that relates to bullying. Their team may help them if they get stuck in on a letter (i.e. Q or Z). Whichever team finishes first “wins.”

After both lists are completed, students will then look at the opposing team’s list of words. (There will be some cross-over words.) They will chat briefly about the words and meanings.
 Teacher will then instruct the students to create a “tableau” using two of the words from the opposing team’s list. A tableau is a frozen picture using the student’s bodies as the “art.” So for example, the students can use “Mean” and “Scared” as their two words – their tableau may have three students standing over two others in a threatening pose. This is a frozen moment. They should not share their words with the other team.
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Give students about five to ten minutes to “compose” their tableau. Then have each group present the tableau to the other. Have the watching team guess at the words being portrayed.
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If there is time, add some dialogue to this. Go to each frozen student, holding a hand over their head, ask them to speak in the voice of the person they are representing and say what they are thinking or feeling in that moment.

At the end of class, discuss what the words represent, in terms of bullying.
How did the tableaus make the students feel? As the bullies? As the victims? Did it seem realistic or fake?

For tomorrow, have them write a reflection of what bullying means to them.
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Jennifer Little 2011
Applied Theatre
Content/Concepts/Skills students will be learning
Students will begin to learn the definition of bullying, both from a “national, expert perspective” and from their own view. Students will experience a physical moment from bullying and have a moment to empathize with the roles of Bully, Victim or Bystander.
Student Assessment
Students are assessed on participation in the alphabet game, verbal responses to the questions from the tableau game and active participation in tableau exercise. Students will also be assessed on written reflection due tomorrow.
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Jennifer Little 2011
Applied Theatre
Day Two Activities, Procedures and Assignments:

Students will start by sharing their reflections they wrote about bullying.
The teacher will facilitate a reaction and discussion to people’s reflections and writings – do the reflections resonate with others in the room? Are the perceptions accurate or are we stereotyping? What do we know? What do we need to learn?

The teacher will then lead a Human Barometer Game – where the students will have an opportunity to discuss and evaluate their perceptions about bullying. There will three zones – Strongly Agree, Strongly Disagree, Not
Sure. The teacher will read a list of statements – students need to choose a zone based on whether they personally agree, disagree with the statements.
If they’re not sure how they feel, they choose “not sure.” After choosing their zone, groups in each zone discuss why they chose that zone and choosing one speaker (a different speaker for each time we have a statement), they must find a way to say in one sentence why their group is standing there. After all three groups present their arguments, an opportunity is given for students to move to a different group, (to reassess if you will). o In today’s world, bullying is expected and often rewarded. o Sometimes violence is a necessary solution. o Teasing and rough play is not that serious. o Bullying and harassment are the same thing. o Cyber bullying can easily be prevented. o Poor people commit more acts of violence than people with money. o Men are more likely to be bullies than women. o The family is where we first learn to bully. o We can someday live in a non-violent world.

After the human barometer game and discussion, students will be split into groups of four to five students in a group. They will be given a large piece of paper to share. They’ll be instructed to brainstorm on the following three questions: o What is bullying? o What acts of bullying are students in our school committing and/or falling victim to? o What have you observed in the halls or in your classes?
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Give students about ten to fifteen minutes to brainstorm and discuss. If they finish early, you can start on tomorrow’s project – but this plus the human barometer usually eats up an entire period.
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Wrap up with a brief discussion about whether any perceptions changed during the human barometer game. Did anything surprise the groups about the brainstorming session? Any observations or discussions come out that they didn’t expect? (For example, my students got into an active debate about “intent” and the definition of bullying.)
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Jennifer Little
Content/Concepts/Skills students will be learning
2011
Applied Theatre
Students will start to redefine and analyze their perceptions on violence and bullying, its roots and its future. Students will work on their own observations, sharing stories and start to look at the school community.
Student Assessment
Students will be assessed on written reflection (handed in). Students are assessed on participation in the human barometer game, verbal responses to the questions from the brainstorming session.
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Jennifer Little 2011
Applied Theatre
Day Three Activities, Procedures and Assignments:
 Students will be split back into yesterday’s groups of four to five students in a group. They will be given back their brainstorming on the following three questions: o What is bullying? o What acts of bullying are students in our school committing and/or falling victim to? o What have you observed in the halls or in your classes?

The teacher will then instruct them to review specifically instances of bullying they’ve observed. They will take a moment to review and share those stories within their group. They will then pick one story to turn into a series of two tableaus – the moment before the bullying took place, and the moment of the bullying. Often, they will not know what precipitated the bullying, so they must create that for themselves.

Students will be given five to ten minutes to create their tableaus and then they will present them for the rest of the class. The class will watch both.
If appropriate, some slow motion action may be added to help clarify the story. After we watch the before and during. The teacher will lead a discussion: o What is happening? o Who is victim? Who is the bully? Who are the bystanders? o What are their roles in this instance?

This is often a good moment to stop and have each performer state their characters thoughts or feelings in the moment. Then the teacher will lead the group in one more discussion. o How do we prevent this violence or bullying from occurring?
Could we have stopped it in the “before” moment? o If not, what now? What do we do now? What are the students’ thoughts? Suggestions, ideas?

This is a moment to help empower students to actively look for ideas to help solve the situation. Teachers can introduce the concepts of
Overcoming the Bystander Effect and Using Target Denial to Be Safe
(both promoted and used effectively by KIDPOWER). In addition, a good moment to introduce the Four Anti Bullying Rules: o We will not bully others o We will try to help students who are being bullied o We will try to include students who are left out o If we know that somebody is being bullied, we will tell an adult at school and an adult at home.
Content/Concepts/Skills students will be learning
Students will start to find their own solutions to bullying in their community. Students will continue to work on their own observations, sharing stories and start to look at the school community.
Student Assessment
Students are assessed on participation in the tableau discussion and solutions activity.
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Jennifer Little 2011
Applied Theatre
Day Four Activities, Procedures and Assignments:

Today students will look at the most serious consequence of bullying – bullycide. Teacher will start by asking students if they understand the word and definition. If yes, a news article will be handed out about a recent bullycide (we used Tyler Clemente for this exercise but Carl
Hoover or Phoebe Prince work equally well)

Students are asked to first read the article silently to themselves. (The article provided should be relatively short. If needed, the teacher can read it aloud to the class.)
 The teacher will then put the bullycide victim’s name in a circle on the board and ask the students who was impacted by this event. Encourage the students to go beyond the obvious (family, community – to media, the bullies themselves, the bullies’ families, nation? Etc)

Once the teacher has a graph on the board showing all those impacted, students will be paired up together. One student will play the role of the
“reporter” and the other one of the many people impacted by the death.
The reporter will interview the person impacted. Depending on the level of the class, taking a few minutes to come up jointly with some questions may help facilitate the activity. Questions can include: o What is their name? o What was their relationship with the victim? o How will did they know all the people involved? o What do they think of all of this? o Do they think the bully is getting bum rap in this? (If the interviewee is not the bully) o How will this affect their community?

Students should be given 10 to 15 minutes to interview each other.
Encourage students to take on some of the “tougher” roles – for example, the bullies. (In our experience, the students who took on those roles really experienced some epiphanies that day about the fallout on the bullies who never expected things to go that far.)
 Teacher can ask students to volunteer to “act out” one or two of the interviews for the class. Follow up with discussion – how did they feel about the person being interview? How did they feel about the role of the media? How did the interviewee feel? What role does media play in all of this?

After a few students demonstrate, take a moment to discuss how the bullying impacts more than just the victim. It impacts the entire community – let the students discuss how that might be true even if it doesn’t lead to bullycide. Can they find situations where the entire community is impacted?

For the final exercise – hand students “Diamond Poem” handout:
______________
____________ ______________
______________ ______________ _____________
____________ ______________
______________
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Jennifer Little 2011
Applied Theatre
Have them write in the following for each blank: o Top row – “How do you feel about bullying?” o Second row – “What does bullying look like?” o Third row – “What does bullying sound like?” o Fourth row – “Words representing safety” o Fifth row – “Any word to complete your poem”
They can show these at the end of class – read them aloud if they like. A simple written reflection of the day’s work.
Content/Concepts/Skills students will be learning
Students will understand the broader implications of bullying on the community. Students will empathize with all players in the bullying scenario, including the bullies themselves.
Student Assessment
Students are assessed on participation in the bullycide discussion and interview activity.
In addition, they are assessed on their writing of the `poem.
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Jennifer Little
Materials (include student materials and teacher reference works)
2011
Applied Theatre
Creighton, Allan and Kivel, Paul, Helping Teens Stop Violence: a Practical Guide for
Educators, Counselors and Parents , Hunter House 1992
Day, Nancy, Violence in Schools: Learning in Fear , Enslow Publishers, 1996
GLSEN,
ThinkB4YouSpeak Educator’s Guide van der Zande, Irene, Executive Director, Kidpower.org
Lockwood, D., Violence Among Middle and High Schol Students: Analysis and
Implications for Action , Washington DC: National Institute of Justice, US Department of
Justice
Olweus, D., S.P. Limber, V. Crocker Flerx, N. Mullin, J. Riese and M. Snyder, Olweus
Bullying Prevention Program, Halzelden Publishing 2007
Pipher, Mary , Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Lives of Adolescent Girls , Random House
1998
Thornton, T.N., Craft, C.A., Dahlberg, L.L., Lynch, B.S. Baer, K., Best Practices of
Youth Violence Prevention: A Sourcebook for Community Action , Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA 2000
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