It's been a while.... and spring fever bullies :(

Oh man, I am seriously the worst blogger ever. I love it so much and I forget that getting my ideas written down always makes me feel better about life... I don't know why I let so much time go by without posting. I'm working on it!

In the meantime, we are 2 WEEEEKS AWAY!!!! from the end of the school year - can you tell I'm excited or what?!? My first full year as a teacher is over almost over, sigh. This last stretched has seemed extra long too, I don't know what it is about the weather warming up - but these kids have been going nuts! They are being so mean to each other, I have rampant bullying in my class :( Super sad, especially because compared to last year's class - these guys are angels. Rule number 5 in our class is to KEEP YOUR DEAR TEAMMATES HAPPY and most days, we are not very happy.

I had to do something. After a lot of brainstorming (and google-ing) I came up with a two part "bullying worskshop"

First, I took a page from my beloved Daily 5 book - and we made an I chart about how NOT to be a bully.

This is where I had planned to stop, but the bullying continued - grrrr - so the next day we made another I chart about WHY kids are bullies (This I chart was a little heart breaking, you could really see that it was hitting home with some of my not so nice troubled kiddos)

From there, I found THIS activity online, We completed a bullying survey as a class - you can find the survey HERE

I liked the idea of the bullying survey results being displayed as a bar graph - so that we could really see where we have the most issues. I tweaked the activity a bit to fit our class needs - mostly managing the materials etc. I have each student 8 Yes/No cards. I then read the questions out loud and they had to write the question number on their answer - Question number 1 "Has anyone ever called you a name?" if their answer is YES - they write the number 1 on the yes side of the card... and so on.

Last, but not least, the class created anti-bullying posters which we posted all along the walls in our hallway. We are still having some issues here and there - it is mostly the same three students, so I am focusing on making them feel loved and included and I am working on my own PATIENCE because lord Jesus.... sometimes o_o

I hope this helps if there are any bullying issues out there - let's be honest, there always is, sigh.