Collaboration: Bullying Thematic Unit

[Lisa Huff]

Anyone interested in forging a book collaboration? I'll be undertaking a thematic unit on bullying starting around October. We'll read The Crucible as the core text, literature circles will select and read young adult (and a few nonfiction) related titles (Nineteen Minutes, Shattered, Noone Left to Hate, Monster, to name a few), and current event articles.

I'd love to plan this unit together with other teachers to create a collabarative component, to link our students in a collaborative project. As part of the unit, I thought it would be interesting to include cyberbullying.

If we could agree on an essential question and a list of guiding questions, perhaps we could design activities and a culminating product students would produce in answer to the essential question. For example, in answer to the cyberbullying issue, students might produce a website or a podcast giving tips to combat cyberbullying and offer teen tips for online safety.

But, first...I must find some other teachers who'd like to join me. Anyone out there interested?

[Tim PappaG]

Lisa,
I taught a unit on Violence/Compassion in literature with some threads on school violence (prevention, how to identify possible threats, etc.) I also wanted to enter the idea that Compassion is a strength, not a weakness, and that was also an interesting set of experiences. A friend of mine wrote a book called Increase the Peace (published by Heinemann), and we used some video clips and ideas from that project.

I used some Latin American stories by Marquez as well as The Lottery by Jackson. Some poems. I am open to exploring a cornerstone text, although we don't use the Crucible in my school....

[Tim PappaG]

I have taught a thematic unit on Violence, Community and Compassion. Bullying was a topic involved, but I liked these themes because they encompassed media critique and also community-level issues. We read Laramie (drama) and several shorter pieces. The cyberbullying topic sounds interesting.