Subject: SEL (Social-Emotional Learning)
Lesson Length: 20 - 30 mins
Topic: Anti-bullying
Brief Description: Students will learn about living as an upstander and explore what they would say to someone who is bullying someone else.
Know Before You Start: Knowing what an upstander vs. bystander is and practicing upstander dialogue would be helpful.
Hook:
-
Have students pretend they have a time machine. Ask them if they had the ability to go back to a time they witnessed someone teasing someone else or even themselves being teased, if they could say anything to them, what would they say?
-
Explain how sometimes when we are in a stressful moment we don’t know what to do or say to support ourselves or peers. Then as a group, practice some things we could say to be an upstander against bullying.
Activity: Read and discuss the sample comic. What would you do if you saw someone picking on someone?
-
Brainstorm ideas on how to be an “upstander” when situations like the one in the comic arise. Discuss “upstander” language.
-
Using the comic as a guide, have students create a two-panel “Upstander” comic.
-
Panel 1: show your avatar expressing the actions you would take to be an upstander against bullying in school.
-
Panel 2: Show your avatar confronting a situation and using appropriate upstander language.
Closure:
-
Display student comics in the classroom to remind them of their responsibilities as an upstander.
-
You may also want to keep a scrapbook of all these comics in the classroom for students to read during free time.
Differentiation:
-
Pre Teach the concept of upstander vs. bystander.
-
Select specific scenarios for students as needed.
-
Allow students to use speech-to-text feature as needed.
Resources:
- Comic to print or display: Comic.
- Suggested Reading:
- Dare! A Story About Standing Up to Bullying in Schools by Erin Frankel.
Suggested Content Packs: