Step 4: Friends Help Friends (Page

Step 4: Friends Help Friends

Ways to Get Help for Friends in Need

Explain to students that part of friendship is helping out those in need, whether they are your friends or not. The word “friend” should be used interchangeably with “other children,” and students are expected to help their peers and classmates when they are in trouble. If a student sees another child who is upset, mad, or worried, they can lend a helping hand. Follow these tips to helping out another student who is being bullied or left out.

See - Notice that another child is feeling sad, lonely, worried, or scared. Note the cues that you can see in their face, body, and voice.

Talk - Ask the other child “Are you OK?” Depending on what is upsetting them, you can offer to include them in your group, to share a toy, to give them a hug, or to help them pick up spilled items. No matter what, just offering to be a friend will help out the situation.

Help - If talking to the other child did not help solve the problem, find an adult for help.

Extension Activity: Create a poster for displaying the protective strategies of See, Talk, Help. Have students show examples of each situation by drawing pictures by each word to demonstrate the steps.

Puppet Role-Play

After identifying the 3 basic steps for helping others (See, Talk, Help,) use puppets to practice them. Have a target, a bully, a bystander, and “adult” or “friend” puppets. First, use puppets to show the situation if the bystanders doing nothing. Ask students What was unfair about that situation? Did anyone help out the target? Whose side were the bystanders on? Point out to students that since the bystanders did nothing, they were on the bully’s side.

Now try again, but have students suggest ideas using the See, Talk, Help strategies. Show students how standing up for others gives power to the target and takes it away from the bully. You can even ask the bully puppet which side it would rather be on to show how power can shift so that everyone wins in the end!

Situation #1: You and your friends are standing outside waiting for school to start when you notice that Lucy is standing by herself in her bright yellow galoshes. A group of 5th graders begin teasing Lucy because of her galoshes and Lucy becomes scared and embarrassed. What should you do? Guide students through how they can first observe Lucy’s emotions and see that she is scared, then go over and join her or talk to her. They can say something like “Are you ok, Lucy? Why don’t you come join us over here?” This can be a good scenario to demonstrate needing to get adult help. If the 5th graders do not leave Lucy alone after her peers join her, it is a good time for someone to find adult help.

Situation #2: At snack time you are sitting with a group of friends and you notice that the new boy in school, Jeremy, is looking for a place to sit. He comes over to your group and asks if he can sit with you. One of your friends, Danny, tells him “No, you’re not allowed to sit here.” You feel very sorry for Jeremy and want to do something about it. What can you do? Help students realize that even if the “bully” is their friend, they can still stand up for the target while helping their friend understand that it’s ok to accept others. Students can say things like “Jeremy, why don’t you come sit by me, there’s plenty of room over here,” or “Jeremy, I’d love to hear about your old school. Come sit over here and tell us all about it!”

Movement Activity

“Mirroring” is a great exercise to get students working as a team. This activity shows how easily power can shift from one person to another. First, pair up all of the students and have them spread out in the classroom. Have each couple pick person A and person B, and have them face each other as if there is a mirror in between. Person A will start out as the leader making very slow, smooth movements while person B is the mirror and follows person A’s movements. You may want to demonstrate this exercise first with a volunteer to show how movements need to be slow and smooth for the other person to follow.

Turn on some gentle background music for atmosphere and have students practice moving arms and legs while staying in the same place. After students have practiced for a while, have them switch leaders. Try this for a couple of turns and then have students start switching leaders on and off by themselves. Encourage students to make transitions between leaders seamless so that no one knows who is leading and who is following.

Discuss with students how it felt after completing the activity. What was it like? Was it harder to be the leader or the follower? How well did you work with the other person? Was it hard or easy to tell who was leading and who was following?

Resources for Teachers

All content for this workbook is developed in collaboration with YouthSeen. For additional information on postperformance wellness resources, please visit: https://youthseen.org/about-us/.

Websites

https://casel.org https://www.ihollaback.org/bystander-resources/ https://www.stopbullyingnow.com/ https://www.learningforjustice.org/ https://www.thebullyproject.com/tools_students

Suggested Reading for the Classroom

The Invisible Boy

By Trudy Ludwig, Patrice Barton (Illustrator) Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers (2013) A gentle story that teaches how small acts of kindness can help children feel included and allow them to flourish, from esteemed author and speaker Trudy Ludwig and acclaimed illustrator Patrice Barton.

Quiet Please, Owen McPhee!

By Trudy Ludwig, Patrice Barton (Illustrator) Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers (2018) Owen McPhee doesn’t just like to talk, he LOVES to talk. He spends every waking minute chattering away at his teachers, his classmates, his parents, his dog, and even himself. But all that talking can get in the way of listening. And when Owen wakes up with a bad case of laryngitis, it gives him a muchneeded opportunity to hear what others have to say.

The Power of One

By Trudy Ludwig, Mike Curato (Illustrator) Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers (2020) When one child reaches out in friendship to a classmate who seems lonely, she begins a chain reaction of kindness that ripples throughout her school and her community. One kind act begets another, small good deeds make way for bigger ones, and eventually the whole neighborhood comes together to build something much greater than the sum of its parts.

Say Sorry And Mean It: Apologizing From The Heart

By Trudy Ludwig, Maurie J. Manning (Illustrator) Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers (2006) Jack’s friend, Charlie, knows how to get away with just about everything: “If you get caught, just say you’re sorry.” But does an apology count if you don’t really mean it? And what happens when the person you’ve hurt knows you don’t mean it? Jack’s about to find out there’s a whole lot more to a real apology than a simple “sorry!”

My Secret Bully

by Trudy Ludwig, Abigail Marble (Illustrator) Publisher: Dragonfly Books, New York (2003) Monica is a target of relational aggression, emotional bullying among friends who will use namecalling and manipulation to humiliate and exclude. But with a little help from a supportive adult—her mother—Monica learns to cope and thrive by facing her fears and reclaiming power from her bully.

Confessions of a Former Bully

by Trudy Ludwig, Abigail Marble (Illustrator) Publisher: Dragonfly Books (2012) After Katie gets caught teasing a schoolmate, she’s told to meet with Mrs. Petrowski, the school counselor, so she can make right her wrong and learn to be a better friend. Bothered at first, it doesn’t take long before Katie realizes that bullying has hurt not only the people around her, but her, too. Told from the unusual point of view of the bullier rather than the bullied, Confessions of a Former Bully provides kids with real life tools they can use to identify and stop relational aggression.

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