Bullying Books

Yesterday I read to my third graders the story by Kevin Henkes Chrysanthemum.  The story is about a little mouse who loves her name.  When she goes to school, the other children make fun of her.  They call her names, make fun of the number of letters, etc.  She really begins to dislike her name but her parents encourage her and she goes back to school.  Finally, the students meet the new music teacher who has a name with the same qualities as Chrysanthemum's name.  The kids adore the music teacher and then begin to leave Chrysanthemum alone.  I read the story to the students once and then on the second time we took a nice clean picture of her and passed it around.  As the kids in the story were mean to her, we crinkled the paper.  By the end of the story, the paper was in a ball.  When the kids finally begin to act with kindness towards, Chrysanthemum we unfold the paper and relate it to saying sorry.  Once the wrinkles (or words are said) are put on a person's heart, the person's heart is never the same.  It is a great lesson.  Today though, my teaching partner introduced me to a new book titled, Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun: Having the Courage to be Who You Are  by Maria Desmondi.  It was a wonderfully illustrated story with a great lesson on kindness and how to handle a bully.  She gave me a cute worksheet that went with it that I would love to share on here but I do not know yet where it came from.  After the book, we made Venn diagrams using the questions on the worksheet to compare two students in the room.   The kids had a great time with this activity.  Here is one of our Venn's.