Short Story Performance Assessment: Bargain

Teacher and parent awareness is one of main obstacles in preventing bullying prevention. Teachers and parents do not take bullying as being serious and underestimate the effects it has on children (Cohen, 2008). It is reported that 85% of teachers think they intervene to stop bullying, however only 35% of students feel that teachers do (Cohen, 2008). Many parents and teachers do not have the proper knowledge on what establishes bullying. They see bullying as only being violence and ignore the verbal assaults that are occurring (Cohen, 2008). They do not know the signs to look for and have not been properly trained on how to resolve the issue (Cohen, 2008).

Students will listen to a simple story (such as The Three Little Pigs or Goldilocks and the Three Bears), and then will re-enact that story using puppets to reflect the timeline of events and characters of the story. Sequencing also develops listening, observation, and memory skills, which are necessary for all areas of learning. “Sequencing is an important part of problem solving across subjects” (Reading Rockets).

Bullying is defined as “verbal, physical, or psychological abuse or teasing accompanied by real or perceived imbalance of power” and is usually targets what children perceive as different (Olweus, 1993). Bullying is prevalent across the nation. It has devastating effects on students each day. Bullying is a problem for all students, regardless of race, gender or class. The National Education Association reports that 160,000 children are absent intentionally from school each day because they fear being bullied whether it is an attack or just intimidation by other students. This accounts for 15% of all school absenteeism (Hunter, 2012). Dan Olweus (1993) from the National School Safety Center tells us that bullying includes three parts: (1)

A summarizing anchor charts will be created during the formal instruction as a visual aid. The class will practice together paraphrasing two the mini stories students shared earlier. The class as a whole will work together to summarize using their own words the beginning, middle, and end of two mini stories.

Students will work in collaborative groups to sort which information is needed, what can be acted out and what is not needed. (Which information do you think you can take out? Why? Is there anything you may be able to add to your part of the story? If so, why would you add it?)

Explore how and why events occurred, decisions were made, and actions were taken or not.

Using note cards with flowchart. Often students can remember parts of a story but have difficulty getting events in the right sequence. Give these students note cards to create their flow chart. They write something they remember from the story onto a note card, one idea per card, and when finished, they arrange the note cards into the correct sequence. This is an activity that can be done as a whole-group exercise or in pairs with partners helping each other with the sequence. In addition to arranging the cards in a flowchart, students can put them into columns labeled beginning, middle and end.

Students will then proceeded to read another quick passage in their textbooks ( page 328), and in groups of four or less will discuss and create a chart comparing/ contrasting 3 things:

Bullying has engrained in American society since the country’s founding. Bred from a capitalistic economy and competitive social hierarchy, bullying has remained a relevant issue through the years. School age children are learning skills and lessons from their teachers as well as through peer interactions. Although schools are great tools that children benefit from, there are some bad experiences, such as bullying, that may negatively affect and remain with these children for the rest of their lives. Some

Mary Michael once said, “High school has taught me more life lessons than actual education.” At West, especially with this project, the main goal is not to learn the literal objective of an assignment; but to realize a bigger picture and figure out how we can use these skills in the future. In finishing the Bullying Project, there are many aspects that help me understand the impacts of bullying on people at school and out in the real world.

Among activities completed in the classroom, historical timelines can be used, in order to develop contextual knowledge of a subject, and can provide background information for texts students may be studying. Chronological ordering is also a part of basic comprehension of texts (students should have an understanding of the ordering of events in texts), and is necessary, for students to recall information. The importance of this skill is reflected by its presence in the syllabus, specifically in points such as EN3-5B, content point “investigate how the organisation of texts into chapters, headings, subheadings, home pages and subpages for online texts and according to chronology or topic can be used to predict content and assist navigation” (NSW Board of Studies,

For a group of middle schoolers, I would first tell them a story on how I got bullied in middle school to establish a connection with them. I would give them advice and recommendations on how to deal with a bully. This would establish ethos with them because they know I know went through a similar experience. I would next bring other people who have been bullied so they can different experiences than just mine. I will pass them out pamphlets on how to deal with anxiety bullying gives you and advise them to call a the school’s hotline so they can talk to someone on there problems.

After I planned the shared reading portion of the lesson, I planned a short writing activity where my student would have the opportunity to write down the three main events from the story.

With school-aged children, bullying more frequently happens while they are at school, or afterward when the students are not being supervised by their teacher in places like the cafeteria, bus, lockers, playground or neighborhood. Now that kids have access to online technology, bullying can also happen on the internet. With this in mind, teachers must now research and understand what bullying is, and develop methods to help fight against bullying. Bullying is the aggressive, unwanted behavior that occurs between kids of all ages. Children that bully are using the power they believe they have over other kids to try to control and harm them. Bullying can happen via verbal, social, or physical abuses, such as name-calling, threats, spreading rumors, isolation, embarrassment, spitting, hitting, destroying personal things, etc. In order to be considered bullying, these bad behaviors are repeated over time.

As a teacher I would plan an activity for the whole class to participate in to teach the effects of bullying. I think a good activity that I could plan for my students would be to let them create a play that discusses bullying. First we would talk about what bullying means, how the person being bullied feels, and how the bully might