James Gillespie’s Primary School

What can we do..?

This week the CP Investigators worked in groups to think about bystanders – people who might witness something happening, but may not be part of the situation. In previous sessions the CP Investigators have talked about the impact that people ‘standing by and just watching’ can have on a bullying situation. The children agreed that there should be advice for people who find themselves witness to bullying, but maybe don’t know how to help. Below are some of the messages the children created:

Why not use the comments section (at bottom of page) to let the CP Investigators know what you’ve seen people do to help when someone is experiencing bullying?

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Posters: Children need adults to…

The Investigators have been thinking about what they need from the Adults in Their Lives and they have created messages in poster form. The children have designed these posters as aides to ‘help adults help children’ if they suspect or know the child is being bullied.

The posters capture recurring ideas that children have discussed during their CP investigates workshops, such as ‘adults are often too busy to help’ or ‘adults forget what it’s like for children who are experiencing bullying’ – the children hope that their posters will remind adults that they CAN help.

See some of the children’s poster ideas below. What do you think? What would you like others to think or do if you are experiencing bullying? Leave the investigators a comment below.

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What children need from adults.

At this weeks session we looked at what children say they need from adults when being subjected to bullying.   Together we looked at how we can give adults a clear message about what they should feel and what they should do when children ask them for help and support.

We discussed;

• “Who children think and say that they can trust”
• “What should they be like? What qualities and skills should they have?”
• “What do adults need to feel”
• “What do adults need to do”

Using these questions as a starting point our team discussed how all of these questions can be reflected in a poster made and designed to deliver a message to the adults in their lives, in school at home and in their communities.

Watch out for our posters! They will be coming your way very soon!

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Fifth Meeting

In this session the Investigators thought about the qualities of the adults that could help when children are experiencing bullying. The Investigators created the posters below to describe those qualities and thought of the helpful adults as Superhero characters.

What do you think of the posters and what qualities would your anti-bullying Superhero need? Leave the investigators a comment at the bottom of the page.

 

Fourth Meeting

Think, Feel & Do.

In this session the CP Investigators were asked to think about 5 adults they would talk to about being bullied; what do those adults need to THINK, FEEL & DO to help and what might adults THINK, FEEL & DO which may be unhelpful to them?

After thinking through some ideas the CP Investigators started to produce posters highlighting both the helpful and unhelpful things that adults THINK, FEEL & DO. When the posters are finished they will be displayed in school and we will have copies of them available here on the blog too…

The group thought about bullying and discussed their ideas for how adults can help:

“Bullying makes us feel lonely and sad.”

“We should ask adults if they remember being bullied when they were children and how it made them feel.”

“Don’t let children down, we won’t trust you the next time.”

“Adults need to tune in to how we are feeling. It’s not always easy to speak about your feelings.”

“We want to talk to adults about our problems in private not in front of the class.”

“Do something about bullying. Take action. Listening isn’t enough.”

“We need trust and support. Adults need the time to listen.”

“Adults move on. Teachers move jobs and it means you have to build up trust again.”

“It’s hard to know who to talk to sometimes.”

“You don’t want to worry your parents.”

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Third Meeting

Today the CP investigators heard a short story about a child named Sandy; Sandy is having a difficult time with bullying and he isn’t sure what to do. Our CP Investigators listened to Sandy’s story and afterwards they were set the challenge of suggesting how the story could be better for Sandy. Below are some of our CP Investigators insights, don’t forget to leave a comment and let us know what you think.

To read Sandy’s Story for yourself, please click on this link…

CP Investigates (Sandy’s Story)

“Bullying is…

When someone tells horrible things about you.

Saying that you are fat and not good at something.

People shouting swears at you.

People sometimes pretend to be friends with you.”

– CP Investigator

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Second Meeting

A Healthy Happy and Safe School

This week we looked at what we need to be healthy, happy and feel safe at school. We talked about what happens on our way to school, how we get there and who with. We also looked at break times and lunchtimes, our time in the playground and in the corridors. We thought about what happens in the classroom, our teachers and learning assistants and what they can do to help us feel happy and safe when in school. We also talked about how we might use our Children’s Parliament Investigates Notepads to remember our ideas and keep a note of thoughts for next time.

We hope you enjoy!

“It doesn’t matter if you are different”

“Teachers should get more involved”

“You need to trust people, don’t be mean to each other”

“Boys and girls should be treated the same”

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First Meeting

We met for our first session as Children’s Parliament Investigators in James Gillespie’s Primary School to begin investigating bullying. But first we wanted to talk about coming together as a team, how we would work together, discuss our ideas, and share our work with our school, our family and our community.

During this first meeting we looked at the idea of human dignity. We discussed what we knew about human dignity and the feelings we experienced when our dignity was respected and promoted or how we felt when our dignity wasn’t respected and we were made to feel bad or small.  In pairs we produced a “dignometer” which you can see on this page and we hope that you enjoy seeing how we wanted to represent our feelings using words, images and colour.

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Leave a comment below and let the investigators know what you think about dignity…