Character Education and Bullying using JUST KIDDING and a FREEBIE

We have been spending a little time every month on Character Education as a whole group in sixth grade.  We have had several speakers come in to speak with our Smarties about bullying of all kinds.  Each month our team does a lesson about learning to accept diversity and find tolerance with each other.
In November, I read Just Kidding to my team.  Have you heard of this book?  It is by Trudy Ludwig

It tells the story of a boy who is being bullied in school.  The bully teases the boy, calls him names, makes fun of him etc. and every time he gets caught, the bully says : Just Kidding.  We talked about how saying "Just Kidding" is really a form of bullying.  We made an anchor chart about what you should know about Bullying to keep up on the wall as a reminder.

Lastly, we made Jack:  I called this activity Jack simply because I do not have a Jack in my class.  We start off with an anchor chart of a "student" that is clean and crisp.

I ask students to take Jack and then either:  Think of one mean thing that they have said to someone else, one mean thing that has been said to them, or one mean thing that was said to the student in Just Kidding.  Ever student takes a turn passing the paper and making the statement.  After they make the statement they crumple up the paper.  When we are finished, the paper is a huge wadded up ball.  Then we take turns thinking of a compliment that we could give others or that others have given to us, and we uncrumple the paper.  What we discover is this:

No matter how much we try to get rid of the wrinkles in the paper we can't.  We hung this on the wall as a reminder that "Just Kidding"  can be hurtful.

Finally~  and yes, sorry this is a LONG post.. we used the quote on my classroom wall and wrote about what it means to us as a class.

After all that... a Freebie!  I posted the paper that I created for the quote.  My students used it and we hung the paragraphs up in the hallway along with our anchor chart and "wrinkled Jack" for the rest of our smarties to see.

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