Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Good Bye Bully Machine, Hello Kindness!

My fifth graders just finished their bullying unit using the book Goodbye Bully Machine! 

Description from Amazon:  Kids learn what bullying is, why it hurts, and what they can do to end it with this fresh, compelling book.  The unique format of Good-Bye Bully Machine helps kids understands the definition and impact of bullying by comparing git to a mean machine-the bully machine.  Kids can see how bullying makes the machine grow more imposing, while kind behaviors dismantle it.  Through the machine, kids gain awareness of their roll in bullying, whether they are targets, bullies, bystanders--or all three.  The role of the bystander is especially important.  Good-Bye Bully Machine helps kids see the power of the bystander to becoming an ally, which means learning how to show empathy, engage in kind acts, and take a stand against bullying.  It's a perfect way to engage reluctant readers and hard to reach kids.    

 This book does a great job at explaining the different types of bullying as well as the feelings that the victims of bullying feel.  We used the free reader's guide and worked on this unit for 8 weeks.  You can download the reader's guide here.   You can purchase the book here.  Here is the breakdown of our lessons:

Lesson 1:  Read Goodbye Bully Machine!
Use the discussion questions on pages 4-9 in the Reader's Guide to lead a group discussion.  We discussed the questions as we went through the book verses saving all of the questions till the end.


Lesson 2:  Make Bully Machine Collages
You can find this activity in pages 12-14 of the Reader's Guide.  Here are some examples:





Lesson 3:  Our Classroom is A Place Where...
You can find this activity on pages 15-17 of the Reader's Guide.  Directions for leading this activity are on page 11.

Lesson 4: Class discussion on the perspectives of the bully, the victim and the bystander.  This group read the Weird Series last year as fourth graders so we referred back to the main characters in Weird, Dare, and Tough. I first did my Good Bye Bully Machine lesson two years ago and really wanted to build on it.  As I was looking for ideas I came across the school counseling by heart blog.  She also used the weird series as party of her Bully Machine unit so I am sharing a link to that as well.   You can find her blog HERE.


Lesson 5:  Class discussion on I messages.  "I-Message" worksheets (found in the Reader's Guide on pages 18-19)

Lesson 6:  Bully Book Review
I divided the class into small groups and assigned each group a book about bullying.  The students were given this worksheet from school counseling by heart's blog to complete.  These are the books that I assigned them:  Mookey the Monkey Gets Over Being Teased, Bully B.E.A.N.S., Tease Monster, Alley Oops, My Secret Bully, Just Kidding, Nobody.  


Lesson 7:  Bully Book Review Continued
I had students return to their groups from the week before and gave them time to finish their book review worksheet.  They also had time to create a poster about their book

Lesson 8:  Students Presented their Bully Book Review Book Reports

Bulletin Board/Hallway Display:  We used the "Our Classroom is a Place Where..." lesson from the activity guide to create our bulletin board.  We cut out the different sayings on pages 15-17 and pasted them to the display.  

You can purchase Goodbye Bully Machine! HERE.

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