Anti-Bullying Week – Change Starts With Us

Anti-bullying week took place this year between Monday 11th and Friday 15th November.  The theme this year was “Change Starts With Us.” The aims of this week are to support schools and other settings to help children and young people, school staff, parents and other professionals who work with children to understand that whether it is verbal, physical, online or in-person, bullying has a significant impact on a child’s life well in to adulthood. If we work together and make small changes, we can make a big difference and break this cycle to create safe environments for everyone.

During the week the pupils participated in a variety of anti-bullying lessons including time for everyone to write something unique about themselves and celebrate it.  The pupils also completed anti-bullying homework, which was centred on the pupils’ own ideas, these included anti-bullying posters, writing a diary from the view of a victim of bullying, creating a keeping safe online poster and writing a letter home to parents about staying safe online. Some of these were shared in the celebration assembly on Friday with all pupils.

The exciting activities for Anti-Bullying week are as follows....

Assemblies:

• Monday  - KS2 police assembly on anti-bullying and cyber-bullying
• Tuesday – celebrating diversity - odd socks rock!
• Wednesday - singing assembly with an odd sock song, KS2 virtual anti-bullying workshops
• Thursday -   KS1 police assembly on anti-bullying, KS2 virtual anti-bullying workshops
• Friday - celebration assembly and everyone wearing odd socks!

Anti-bullying - Virtual Reality

All KS2 classes were able to participate in a ground-breaking Virtual Reality Anti-bullying workshop, which offers a safe space to observe and comment on a bullying scenario. 

Bullying behaviour can happen all year round in many ways. The interactive workshop encourages pupils and teachers to witness, dissect and negotiate a typical scenario of bullying behaviour to help decrease bullying behaviour. Developed with experts from Bullying Intervention Group the workshop creates a safe environment to explore the backgrounds and motivations of each character and is delivered using networked headsets linked to 360⁰ videos, CGI and games.

Year 3 enjoying their virtual anti-bullying workshop.