Anti-Bullying Week 2011 took place from 14th-18th November and the theme this year was 'Stop and think-words can hurt'
This year's campaign focussed on children and young people's day to day communication-with a focus on tackling verbal bullying. Expressions such as 'you're so gay' and words such as 'sket' and 'slag' are seen to be key indicators of bullying or hostile environments.
Post card competition
We ran a competition during the week to design an anti-bullying postcard, with the 2 winning entries having their design professionally printed. The postcards will be used by us to distribute to schools and around the county. We received many great entries from Leicestershire schools and even as far afield as the United States of America! Choosing 2 winners (Up to 11 and 12-18 years old) was very difficult but we did manage to narrow it down and our successful designs are below:
Up to 11 winner - Georgia, 11 from Parklands Primary.
12-18's winner - Becky, 13 from St Martin's Catholic School
Our two very well deserving runners up were Ellie, age 6 from New Swannington Primary:
And Emily, year 9, from St Martins Catholic School:
Although we couldn't include out of county (or country) entries in our competition, we appreciated the work that had gone into designing and sending all the pieces of work we received so we decided to include a couple of our favourites!
Chaya Mistry, age 10, Hollingwood Primary School, Bradford
Lulu Bennett, age 9 from St John's Primary School, Kingston Upon Thames
And from The United States of America, Hesham from Forsdon High School, Michigan.
Anti-Bullying Assemblies
We put together 2 assemblies, which were intended to be used by school staff during Anti-Bullying Week to raise awareness as a whole school about the harmful effect words can have.
The Primary assembly (KS1/2) used characters some may remember from Anti-Bullying Week 2010, Cat, Mouse and Dog.
The Secondary assembly (KS3/4) focussed on the issue of language and homophobic bullying.
Links to Past Anti-Bullying Week pages
Stonewall also have some lesson plans and resources on their website, which focus on lesbian, gay and bisexual issues and bullying.