Anna Billings

English 112B

Dr. Warner

November 29, 2011

Unit of Study

Overcoming Bullying

Rationale:

            Bullying is an increasingly problematic issue in schools. Bullying is typically a situation in which the more powerful pray on the weak, for fun, or other reasons. Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a classic piece which features many examples of bullying. The older boys in the story continuously use the littluns for amusement purposes, torturing and picking on them just because they are smaller. Although this story is an extreme example of bullying in schools, the abuse of power can be easily examined. Similarly, Jack and Ralph constantly experience a power struggle, Ralph using his views of civilization and respect to lead the boys, and Jack who wants to take over and turn the group into savage hunters. The majority of bullying in Lord of the Flies is physical; the boys throw rocks at the littluns, they physically take Piggy's glasses, and Jack uses torture to gain information.

            Bullying is a growing issue in schools, mainly because children are not taught how to speak up for themselves or others when they witness acts of bullying. It is extremely important to implement more lessons that create awareness to what can happen when bullying is taken too far. There are many different types of bullying, including physical violence, rumors, verbal abuse, exclusion, and sexual abuse. Most students have probably fallen victim to at least one type of bullying at some point in their life. This unit will help students examine the different ways that bullying can harm others, while hopefully teaching others how to stop bullying when they see it.

            Sadly, Bullying is no longer left on the playground and adolescents have a hard time coping with such harsh behavior from their peers. Cyberbullying, the act of bullying someone on the internet, is difficult to deal with in school because no harm is being caused on school grounds. Cyberbullying can cause more harm to people because there is no way to escape the mean things that are being said. Traditionally, students were able to come home and feel safe from the school bully, but now the bully is following them home leaving students without a safe place anywhere. While children should be taught how to deal with bullies at a young age, many schools do not focus on bullying prevention or children are too afraid to �tattle� on the bullies, thinking they might risk further abuse or bullying. Hopefully the unit will teach adolescents about the impact of bullying, not only on those who are bullied, but on themselves as well.

Launching the Unit:

  1. Before reading Lord of the Flies, students will watch the music video for the song �Mean� by Taylor Swift on YouTube here: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYa1eI1hpDE) .  This song talks about overcoming bullies and moving forward when people say or do mean things. The video itself depicts a wide range of people who are bullied and the different things they are bullied for. While playing the music video, students should write down all of the examples of bullying that they see or hear.

After watching the video, the class should share ways they believe they would react to such behavior, placing themselves in different perspectives:

a. How would you react if you saw someone being subjected to this kind of bullying

b. How would you react if someone said something mean to you?

c. How have you acted that resembles the bullies in this video?

  1. Students will then read the book Confessions of a Former Bully by Trudy Ludwig and Beth Adams. This book deals with bullying from the perspective of the bully, giving students a different outlook on bullying. Confessions of a Former Bully also describes different methods of overcoming bullying and teaching bullies how their behavior is affecting not only others, but themselves as well.

a. Students should do a writing exercise in which they describe a time they bullied someone, discussing how their actions may have affected that person and how they feel about it now.

b. Students can also write a letter to someone they have bullied, apologizing to that person for hurting them.

  1. Students will read Nobody Knew What to Do: A Story About Bullying by Becky Ray McCain and Todd Leonard. This book examines how children react with they witness bullying, but aren't sure what to do about it. The boy who witnesses the bullying eventually tells a teacher who steps in, saving the victim from any future bullying.

a. Students should then participate in an open discussion, providing different ways to approach teachers or parents about bullies in school, in order to stop bullying.

b. Students should share times when they witnessed someone being bullied and did something to stop it.

  1. Watch the movie �Odd Girl Out� in class. This film is about a girl, Vanessa, whose best friend, Stacey, becomes jealous because the boy Stacey likes actually likes Vanessa. Stacey uses rumors and internet bullying to make Vanessa's life miserable, alienating her from the crowd and tearing away all her friends. Students at Vanessa's school create websites and chat rooms for the sole purpose of telling Vanessa that she is fat and has no friends. Vanessa cannot escape the bullying once she goes home because of all the conflict she has to face on the internet.

a. After watching the film, have students break up into groups and make a list of all the ways that cyberbullying can be more hurtful than traditional school yard bullying.

b. As a writing exercise, have students write about a time they said mean things to someone on a social networking site.

 

Centerpiece Work: The Lord of the Flies

            The centerpiece work for this unit is Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a tale of a shipwrecked group of boys who slowly lose all sense of civilized behavior. While Ralph, the protagonist,  represents civilization, Jack, the antagonist, represents chaos and violence. Ralph is elected the leader of the group and Jack is elected the leader of the hunters. Jack and his group of friends constantly bully the younger boys, or littluns, and abuse the power that they have, being so much bigger and stronger than the smaller boys. They even bully Piggy because of his intelligence and the steal his glasses, eventually killing him in a fight. The majority of the boys lose all site of civilized behavior and side with Jack, who is nothing but a torturer and a dictator.

            While reading The Lord of the Flies have students do the following assignments:

  1. Describe the different situations that involve bullying.
  2. Discuss the different ways Ralph uses his power to stop the older boys from picking on the littluns.
  3. Compare and contrast Ralph and Jack's leadership styles.
  4. Have students break up into groups and assign the following characters to different students: Jack, Ralph, Simon, Piggy, Roger, and The Littluns. Then give each group a different scene involving some form of bullying, with lines written as a play, and have them act out that scene in front of the class.
  5. Have the students break up into groups and assign each group a character from Lord of the Flies. Then have the groups write out the character's traits and how that character may feel about bullying.

 

Expanding the Lesson:

  1. After reading Lord of the Flies have students read the young adult novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.

a. Have students write a compare and contrast essay on the theme of bullying in Speak and Lord of the Flies.

b. Discuss the different ways

  1. Pick four to six different stories from the book Dear Bully: Seventy Authors Tell Their Stories. Make copies of each story for the students and have them read the stories for homework. The stories are written in different formats and are based on different experiences. Each story chosen should be from a different section.

a. Have students choose their favorite short story and then write their own, about their experience with bullying, in the same format.

b. Have students pair up and write a skit from alternating perspectives between the bully and the victim.

  1. Other books to pair with Lord of the Flies involving bullying:

a. Hate List by Jennifer Brown

A story about a boy who is bullied so much that he goes on a shooting spree.

            b. Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

            A story about a girl who kills herself because she is bullied.

            c. Endgame by Nancy Garden

            A story about a boy who changes schools, only to realize there are bullies everywhere.

 

Concluding the Unit

            As an end to the unit, have students do a quick three-five minute presentation on what they learned about bullying and what they can do to stop it.

Works Cited

 

Anderson, Laurie Halse. Speak. New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1999. Print.

Asher, Jay. Thirteen Reasons Why. New York: Razorbill, 2007. Print.

Brown, Jennifer. Hate List. New York: Little, Brown, 2009. Print.

Garden, Nancy. Endgame. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2006. Print.

Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. New York: Penguin, 2003. Print.

Jones, Carrie, and Hall Megan. Kelley, eds. Dear Bully: Seventy Authors Tell Their Stories. New York, NY: HarperTeen, 2011. Print.

Ludwig, Trudy, and Beth Adams. Confessions of a Former Bully. Berkeley: Tricycle, 2010. Print.

�Mean� Online Posting. YouTube. 13 May 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYa1eI1hpDE 

McCain, Becky R., and Todd Leonardo. Nobody Knew What To Do: A Story About Bullying. Morton Grove, IL: Albert Whitman &, 2001. Print.

Odd Girl Out. Dir. Tom McLoughlin. Perf. Alexa Vega and Lisa Vidal. Lifetime, 2005.