You can prevent bullying in your classroom by addressing kindness, empathy, and acceptance with your littlest learners early on. After reading Don't Laugh at Me by Steve Seskin and Allen Shamblin, kids discuss the ways that words can hurt others, and that they shouldn't be unkind to others based on the way they look.

Concepts

kindness, disabilities, reading comprehension, empathy, accepting others, friendship, diversity, bullying

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Additional Tags

english language arts

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Instructional Ideas

• Use the bonus activities as homework assignments
• Have pupils read the book as a class, then divide them into reading groups or stations for discussion questions and activities
• Lead a discussion about kind and acceptable ways to talk to peers

Classroom Considerations

• Subject matter is sensitive, so create a classroom environment of acceptance for individuals to learn about disabilities and hurtful comments
• Discussion questions are at the comprehension level, so you'll need to elaborate on the points in order to instill complete understanding
• One of the vocabulary words is geek, which kids may not have heard before, and may inadvertently make its way into their lexicon

Pros

• Promotes awareness and empathy for young kids
• Great for a unit on diversity and adversity

Cons

• Closure activity is based on the accompanying audio CD for the book, which may not be available with all copies that you are able to obtain for your class

Common Core

RL.K.1 RL.K.3 RL.1.1 RL.1.3 RL.2.1 RL.2.3 RL.3.1 RL.3.3