Little Girls Can Be Mean Presnetation

The presentation by Dr. Michelle Anthony on February 22 based on her book Little Girls Can Be Mean offered many ideas for getting students to write. Before giving suggestions for student writing, she talked about the fact that there is an underlying motive that is good even when we see bullying. She indicated that this can stem from a desire of students to be powerful and/ or connect with friends and talked about how this serves an important purpose even though at times this comes across as meanness. She described a 4 step process in dealing with bullying: 1)Observe, 2)Connect, 3)Guide, 4)Support to Act. What she emphasized was the idea that students can respond in each of these areas with writing. Examples include acting some feelings out-- comparing kind vs unkind, safe vs unsafe, welcoming vs unwelcoming behavior and then describing in writing what it would look like if someone was feeling a certain way. She talked about using books like Amazing Grace and then having students put themselves in the emotional perspective of one of the characters and write about what these emotions mean. She gave an example for students to write about Utopia with questions that expand their thinking: "So, what does this mean that everything would be perfect?" "What would you do that day if you had no school?" She also spoke to the idea of getting students to hypothesize about a situation and then write: "If you were listening to your strong side or were courageous in this situation, what would you do?" I thought it was interesting that she connected Reader's Theater or acting something out (active movement that we've talked about last year) to the writing that students could do. I'd be interested to hear if you are able to use some of the writing activities she suggested in her presentation.