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ALERT: 15-19 November is anti-bullying week with the theme “One Kind Word”. The week begins with Odd Socks Day on Monday 15th.
Gooseberry Student
Bullying can take place in person or online. Think about the different feelings you have when someone says or does something nice and kind compared with unkind comments or behaviour.
Do you think people behave differently online compared with offline?
Do you think there should be different behaviour rules online and offline?
Activity: Think about the sort of words that are kind and make you feel good and secure. Design a poster or slide presentation online to promote your kind words.
OR Write a story, poem or song which either starts or finishes with the words “one kind word”. Consider recording it as a video to share in school.
Gooseberry Teacher
Bullying and hate speech are not necessarily the same, but they sometimes cross over and may provide a useful starting point for this year’s anti-bullying week theme of “one kind word”. You could refer to recent news items about hateful online comments made to some of England’s footballers and politicians, to encourage a conversation with your class about how words can impact on our feelings, and about how the basic rules for behaviour online are the same as offline.
Encourage pupils always to tell a trusted adult if they are being bullied either online or offline and explain how they can obtain help at school.
The website https://reportharmfulcontent.com/ is a national reporting centre which helps individuals to report bullying or other harmful content. It also contains a useful summary of some of the many rules which apply to harmful content online.
Gooseberry Parent
The theme of anti-bullying week this year is “One Kind Word”. It provides an opportunity to discuss with your child how different words can make us feel. Kindness and encouragement can boost our wellbeing (whether we are an adult or a child) and bullying or hateful words have the opposite effect. Perhaps share your own story of how a kind word or deed helped you at some point.
Encourage your child to offer a kind word to any child they know who is being bullied.
You might like to take the opportunity to ask them how they are feeling and if anything is worrying them on or offline. If they tell you about online bullying encourage them not to reply but to show you the evidence and help them to block and report the bully.
The website https://reportharmfulcontent.com/ is a national reporting centre which helps you to check if the content is against the platform rules of the site where bullying is taking place and provides direct links to where to report it.
Other Resources
For Gooseberry Schools, you will find supporting lesson plans and accompanying parent advice sheets in:
Playground Level (ages 5-7) – Scenario 8 Online Bullying
Street Level (ages 8-9) – Scenario 7 Online Bullying
Village Level (ages 9-10) – Scenario 4 Safe Sharing
Town Level (ages 10-11) – Scenario 6 Online Bullying
City Level (ages 11-13) – Scenario 7 Passcodes and Passwords
If you subscribe to Gooseberry Guru watch out for November’s updated video on Bullying, available soon.
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