This half term, all of the Riseparkers joined in with the national Anti-Bullying week.
We began with an assembly, which encouraged us to think about the theme ‘Reach Out’, what this means and who we might reach out to.

Throughout the week, each year group focused on different elements of anti-bullying and all had a different challenge. EYFS focused on friendships and kindness, KS1 focused on unkindness and prejudice, including who we can talk to if we feel or see something we don’t think is right. KS2 focused on how bullying happens online as well as face-to-face.

Nursery
In Nursery, we used the stimulus story, ‘The Ugly Duckling’ to explore how it feels to be left out. Children noticed that it was the behaviour of the ducklings that made the ‘ugly’ duckling feel upset, and discussed whether they were being kind and friendly. We then explored how we might feel in that situation. We watched a video in which we saw other children, the same age us, being super kind to each other by sharing, giving hugs, taking turns, offering help, playing and laughing. We all agreed that their friendly behaviour made us want to be their friend. We talked about how we are kind friends we are in Nursery, repeating the phrases “sharing is caring”, “kindness is key”. We challenged ourselves to find what kindness looks like and took lots of photos to record those wonderful moments, to contribute to our ‘what kindness looks like’ Riseparker 😊

Reception
In Reception we watched a story about ‘Topsy and Tim’ helping a friend at school. We used this as a stimulus to talk about how we might feel if someone was left out and picked on throughout the school day. The children commented how the older children were making the boy feel ‘sad’ and ‘upset’ and that if they carried on he wouldn’t want to come to school anymore. We discussed the importance of kind hands and kind words. The children thought about what they could do if they saw someone is upset or if they saw someone being unkind. In our JIGSAW lessons we talked about standing up for ourselves and having the confidence to say ‘Stop it, I don’t like it’. We all agreed that ‘sharing is caring’ and if someone hurts us or keeps being unkind then it is important to tell either a friend or a grown up. After, we challenged ourselves to create a ‘Kindness Rise Parker’ by writing lots of key words that mean being kind.

Year 1
During Anti-bullying week, year one have been thinking carefully about friendships. We firstly reflected on how unique our friends were compared to us either physically, in character, personality or through their religious beliefs. We then decided that even though we are all little different, our friends still make us feel really happy and safe.  We decided as a class, that this message was really important so we thought about different ways we could promote kindness in and around school to encourage others to feel happiness as opposed to feeling lonely or sad. We made friendship flowers to spread our kindness amongst the other students in school. We set ourselves a challenge completing a random act of kindness challenge and have promised to do this at least 5 times. Lots of children in both Ecuador and Spain were caught being kind by their teacher and given a special sticker.

We also discussed the different places that we might make friends outside of school such as at a football clubs, playing on the park, at rainbows or cubs. We shared some good tips on how to make new friendships such as giving out compliments, asking questions to find out more about them or giving out a friendly smile. We then set ourselves a challenge during the week to approach 3 new people to apply our new friendship making skills.

Lastly, we had some time to reflect on types of kind and unkind behaviours and some time to consider the severity of an issue. We thought about if we could solve the situation amongst ourselves or whether we needed to seek help from a grown up.

In the lesson we talked about what to do if somebody was being unkind. Every child in Year one can now identify 5 important and trusted people that they could reach out to seek help from. We also had a special talk from two police officers who taught us all about the consequences of a bully’s actions. We really enjoyed being given the opportunity to ask our visitors lots of questions!

Year 2
In Year 2, we explored what prejudice and acceptance can look and feel like. Firstly, we researched what each word meant and the impact it can have on people. We learnt that prejudice is when you judge someone based on their looks, beliefs, how they act, speak or talk and acceptance is showing people that no matter their differences they are welcome and part of the community. Following this, we looked at some scenarios with prejudice behaviour, and produced some drama and freeze frames to show what it looked like and how it made us feel. We then created a new version showing acceptance and how that made us feel. When we were being prejudice the key vocabulary used, for how it made us feel was: lonely, sad, angry, fearful, powerless, voiceless and many more negative connotations. Once we showed acceptance, those thoughts and feelings turned to: happiness, inclusion, part of a family, proud, loved, excited, and respected.  We created a ‘Life Size Rise Parker’ to display our findings and to remind everyone how prejudice can make people feel and impact their daily lives. We should accept each other for who we are!

Year 3
In Year 3, for Ant-bullying Week, we watched a short film called Wing, where a child with one wing was bullied by others for being different. He then makes a friend, also with one wing and together their friendship silences the bullies.  We then discussed how the different characters were feeling and why they acted as they did.  We used drama to explore what the characters should do.  We took photographs and made notes to record our thoughts and ideas. Next, we thought about the work we have done about online safety and how people can be bullied online.  We looked at the negative comments the bullies sent.  After our drama and discussions, we offered kind and positive comments to make the bullied child feel more confident.  We also offered advice on the theme of “Reach Out” to encourage him to tell family and friends what was happening so they could help him.

Year 4
In Year 4, we looked at why people sometimes feel like they can bully others online. We talked about how people can hide their identity behind a user-name or avatar, and then say mean and unkind things about others. The children wrote nasty things about Mr. Shadbolt’s score in a video game, and stuck them on his back. He asked us to say the mean comments to his face, which was much more difficult for us to do. Next, we looked at how messages sent between two people, about someone else, can get out of hand and turn in to bullying. Working together, took the time to re-write the messages, and change the outcome of conversation. Year 4 learned that it’s important to not be mean from behind a screen, and to reach out if someone is bullying you online. 

Year 5
In Year 5, we considered bullying from both angles: discussing the impact it can have on children who are repeatedly targeted, and also understanding some of the reasons that can lead a person to bully. We watched two pertinant educational videos of children recounting their experiences from both sides of bullying, which led to a lot of in-class discussion. We defined what a bystander is and talked about the strength that it can take to stand up to bullies. Within our classes, we spoke about the importance of speaking to trusted adults and identified who they are in and out of school. When thinking about the reasons why people bully, we discussed how it can stem from an imbalance of power; this could be to do with strength, intelligence and also how it could involve a group of people ganging up on one person. Finally, we completed two main activities: writing speech bubbles to explain the reasons behind why people bully others, and then we created and painted our own emojis to show the feelings behind people who choose to bully.

Year 6
During Anti-Bullying week, year 6 learnt about the effects that cyber-bullying, and in particular trolling, can have on people. We watched a video about the way in which Jesy Nelson from Little Mix was trolled and we learnt about how this affected her mental health. We then looked at how her friends and family supported her during this time and what she did to deal with this. We then discussed how we would deal with trolling and agreed on some strategies. From what we had learnt, we created blogs to tell others about what trolling is; why it is important not to troll due to the effect it has on peoples’ wellbeing, and what to do if you are being trolled.