What is Bully Prevention?
Bullying is a behavior not a person. Recent reports estimate that about 20% of children have been the victim of bullying at school.1 Bullying is intentional negative behavior that is repeated and involves an imbalance of social or physical power.2 Bullying inherently involves social relationships which affects all participants involved: the child being bullied, the child doing the bullying, and the bystanders. It is important to recognize that all children have the potential to be involved in any one of those roles at different times in their school experience. It is important that materials used to prevent bullying address each of these roles in an engaging but safe way.
It is also important that bully prevention materials address 4 important components, Empathy skills, Recognizing Bullying Behavior, Reporting Bullying Behavior, and Refusing Bullying Behavior. It is important to understand what each one is when selecting or delivering lessons.
Key Bully Prevention Areas
Empathy is the ability to think about how someone else might be feeling. It is also the ability to value, respect, and understand other person’s view. This is important for young children because developmentally they are often thinking of how they would feel. Using characters in books or movies is a great way to help children think about and discuss how someone else might feel. This unit incorporates the character, Spookley, to help students place themselves in his shoes and think about how he is feeling.
Recognizing Bullying Behavior
It is important for students to understand the difference between hurtful behavior and bullying behavior. In this unit, students are taught that sometimes we might do or say hurtful things to others. At this age, students are learning to get along with others and there are many times that student’s encounter hurtful behavior. However, this unit distinguishes bullying behavior as something that continues after you have told the person to stop or the behavior is dangerous. This distinction helps students to understand that we all make mistakes. However, when we do we should do or say something to let them know we will try to not do it again.
Reporting Bullying Behavior
Reporting bullying behavior is an important skill for students to feel safe at school. Students are taught that there are some behaviors that they have to report. However, there are somethings that they can try to handle themselves. This is important because students need to learn how to handle small conflicts in appropriate ways. In this unit the students are also taught that bullying is a behavior and not a person. If someone is continuing behavior that they do not like, they should report the behavior. This helps them to remember that they can still try to resolve the conflict with the person. This is important as children get older and use exclusion when bullying behavior occurs. This unit teaches children how to use words to tell a teacher or adult.
Refusing Bullying Behavior
The last important component to this bully prevention curriculum is that students should refuse bullying behavior when they see it. In this unit students are taught that refusing bullying behavior is important for it to stop. They are taught how to be an upstander when bullying happens to them or if they see it happening to someone else. This unit teaches and helps students practice what words they can use if they receive or see bullying behavior.
Spookley the Square Pumpkin
Spookley the Square Pumpkin is an great way to teach empathy and bully prevention with Kindergarten to 2nd grade students. The Spookley book and movie are great ways to begin to have these conversations with younger students.
This 5 lesson bully prevention unit was developed to help teachers explain several of the bully prevention components such as empathy training, recognizing bullying, reporting bullying, and refusing bullying. This unit is the perfect way to explore these topics in a fun and age appropriate way. The lessons build on each other but can also be used singularly or with different grade levels.
Each lesson contains student objectives, key vocabulary, fully scripted content with discussion questions and checks for understanding, and hands-on activities or printables. It makes teaching the lesson easy and with no prep. Perfect for classroom teachers, special educators, counselors, social workers, or psychologists.
Spookley the Square Pumpkin-Bully Prevention Unit: Book Module
Spookley the Square Pumpkin-Bully Prevention Unit: Movie Module
Links to other great Spookley resources
Pacer’s National Bully Prevention Center
Free registry includes access to: Discussion Guidelines and Learning Activities, Multi-Subject Learning Examples, Spookley Classroom Play, Video Reading of the Story, and Streaming of the Spookley movie.
Behavior Savers YouTube Playlist
Collection of videos on YouTube to use with the Spookley Bully Prevention Unit.
Enhance your lessons with these great Spookley products.
The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin
by Joe Troiano
Price: Approximately $6.00
Spookley the Square Pumpkin DVD + CD Set
Price: Approximately $7.00
Spookley the Square Pumpkin 6″ Plush Toy
Price: Approximately $20.00
1 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2016). Understanding bullying. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/bullying_factsheet.pdf
2 Olweus, D. (1993). Bullying at school. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.