Category: Bullying
Title: Each Kindness
Written by: Jaqueline Woodson
Illustrated by: E.B. Lewis
Publisher: The Penguin Group
Year: 2012
ISBN: 978-0-399-24652-4
Reading Level: 4th grade
Number of Pages: 32
Genre: Children's Picture Book
Summary: There is a new girl at school named Maya. She is trying to make friends, but no one will talk to her. Chloe and her friends are being nothing but mean to her. Maya just decided to play by herself and then stopped showing up to school. The teacher gave a lesson on kindness and Chloe realizes that she missed a friendship opportunity and wishes that she could've gotten Maya back.
Critical Review:
Strengths: (Author's Perspective) Jaqueline Woods is an American author who didn't always think that she was going to be a writer. She would draw on sidewalks with chalk and sometimes even graffiti things on walls. She knew she was born to be a writer. Her fifth grade year she wrote a story in which her teacher said was really good. She knew from then on out that she was meant to do this. (Illustrator) E.B. Lewis has illustrated over 70 children's books and has won numerous awards for his watercolor creations. The illustrations in this book are nothing short of amazing. They feature watercolor paintings and have a variety of diversity among them. (Awards) She has won 16 awards for this book alone. Some of the other medals that her books have been awarded include: The Newbery Award, The Caldecott Medal, The Correta Scott King Award, National Book Award, Parent's Choice Award. She is a renowned author who's books are exceptionally incredible. (Multidimensionality and interconnections) The characters in this book were all represented exceptionally well. They each had their part and the characters were diverse in many ways. The story shows why the characters didn't "come together" until the very end when Chloe realized that she hadn't been kind to Maya.
Weaknesses: In my opinion there are no real weaknesses in this book.
Classroom Connections:
Main Themes: A big theme in this book is kindness. When Chloe is mean to Maya, she decides that she is going to play by herself. Then when she doesn't show up for school the next couple of weeks and the teacher gives a lesson on kindness, Chloe starts to feel guilty and wishes she would've been kind to Maya.
Activities: I would have my students a "Take a Stand Together" chain. Each student will be given a piece of paper. On this they will write their very own anti-bullying statement on this. Then we will connect each students' to each other and hang it either in the classroom or outside our door. It would be ideal to have every classroom in the school do this and then connect our chains so that they go on throughout the entire school.
Resources:
Educators- The BULLY Project
This is the official website of The BULLY project. They have resources and tools for educators, victims, students, parents, and advocators. It also has bullying laws on their websites
http://www.thebullyproject.com/tools_educators
Ditch the Label | Anti-Bullying Organization
This is a website that has tools and lesson plans for teachers to use during anti-bullying week or whenever they would like.
https://us.ditchthelabel.org/?_ga=2.55493737.336808327.1556560170-1203322711.1556560170
Bullying Prevention Guide for Educators: 150+ Practices to Combat Bully Behavior
This website contains practices for teachers that show their students how to combat bully's and behaviors.
https://www.teacher.org/resource/bullying/
Category: Bullying
Title: Lion vs. Rabbit
Written by: Alex Latimer
Illustrated by: Alex Latimer
Publisher: Peachtree Publishers
Year: 2013
ISBN: 978-1-56145-709-0
Reading Level:
Number of Pages: 32
Genre: Children's Picture Books
Summary: This book is about a lion who bullies all of the animals in the town. All of the animals are tired of his mean games and they just want it to stop. So each of them try to contest against him and if they win, then the lion will stop bullying them. None of them win, but then a rabbit shows up. The rabbit beat the lion at four different contests and the lion finally said that he would stop bullying the animals.
Critical Review:
Strengths: (Author's Perspective)(Illustrator) Alex Latimer is a South African writer and illustrator. He likes to spend his time doing this. He has written four children's picture books and all have a deep rooted meaning behind them. He is a world renowned illustrator and sells his paintings for a living as well as writing books. (Awards) Latimer has won many awards for this book alone. He won the Parent's Choice Award, Alabama Camellia Award, Black-eyed Susan Award, Washington Children's Choice Award, and Virginia's readers choice award.
Weaknesses: (Stereotyping) While this book has many good lessons throughout it, I noticed that it only has male animal characters. This could be considered a weakness, especially in today's day in age. Also it doesn't exactly address the root of the bullying and the rabbit ends up beating the lion with trickery. So I think that with that, there needs to be more of a reason behind why the lion needed to stop bullying.
Classroom Connections:
Main Themes: Treating others how you want to be treated is a big theme in this book. The lion picks on weaker animals and bullies them to make himself feel better. Then along comes a rabbit to try and defeat him. The lion thinks that this small animal won't be able to defeat him, but the rabbit does time and time again. Each time the rabbit beats him, the lion finds and excuse as to why he lost. At the end, he finally realizes how the other animals have been feeling and vows to treat them in a better way.
Activities: Students could do two different things. They could create skits about bullying. We would watch them and then come up with ways that we could deal with that situation and how we could prevent it next time. Student's could also create a song or rap about how to stop bullying.
Resources:
Stop Bullying.gov
This is the official website of Stop Bullying.gov. It provides resources for teachers as well as students and parents. It focuses on prevention and how students can identify and stand against bullying.
https://www.stopbullying.gov
NEA- Teaching Students to Prevent Bullying
This is the official website of the National Education Association and it gives a variety of resources for teachers on teaching students how to prevent bullying.
http://www.nea.org/tools/lessons/teaching-students-to-prevent-bullying.html
Bullying Help: Resources and Partners | Teaching Tolerance
This is the official website of Teaching Tolerance. There is a list of resources for teachers that they can use to implement anti-bullying lessons. There are websites and books.
https://www.tolerance.org/professional-development/bullying-help-resources-and-partners
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