– Leonie Trimper, President, Australian Primary Principals Association
APPA takes great pleasure in endorsing two video resources for upper primary students on Bullying and Belonging. They really are a fantastic resource and should be in every primary school in the nation.
Video and Extensive Teacher’s Guide
The aim of this program is to motivate students to discuss and explore the dynamics of belonging and develop an understanding of what happens and why. In the process this program addresses a number of factors, including:
- The factors which contribute to a child’s sense of belonging
- How to recognise and develop friendships
- How to help others feel that they belong
- The factors which undermine a sense of belonging
- Who to turn to for support
- Different types of friendship
- Supportive and non-supportive friendships
- The dynamics of friendship groups
This Stories of Us education resource is composed of a 40 page Teacher’s Guide and a dramatised Video.
This program is designed for the upper primary years. At the discretion of their teacher, it may also be used with Year 4 students.
The Teacher’s Guide
The Teacher’s Guide outlines how the resource is used over a number of classes with step-by-step instructions, discussion starters, summary notes and extensive teacher support material.
The film presents the story of two ‘students’ as they deal, in their own way, with the given issue. The objective is to engage, rather than tell – to motivate students to discuss and explore the dynamics of the issues and develop an understanding of what happens and why. With the aid of the Guide the young audience are asked a series of open questions as they explore the issues in-depth. At each stage the Guide clearly indicates the territory to be explored, and provides additional information for teachers should any details need clarification.
The Support & Research section lists a number of websites for teachers seeking further information on the issues.
Because of its realism the film also forms an excellent basis for extension activities in English or Drama.
A preview of the Teacher’s Guide can be downloaded here as a PDF document.
There are two versions of the film provided.
The Play Version is played without interruption, with a prompt at the end to refer to the Teacher’s Guide for questions to begin the discussion. In this version the story is left intentionally unresolved to maximise student engagement in the discussion.
The Segmented Version repeats the main program but with a series of pause points (with Teacher’s Guide questions) for a more in-depth discussion. At the end the main characters tell us how they resolved their situations – with a positive outcome.
The duration the Play Version is 26 minutes 43 seconds and the Segmented Version is 28 minutes 19 seconds.
A 5 minute preview of the film is available at the top of this page.
It’s mid year and the friendship groups in Year 5 are already established when Kyle starts at a new school. An avid reader who’s not good at sport, Kyle worries that he won’t make any friends. On his first day his classmates show little interest. Even the boy allocated to look after him promptly abandons Kyle in the busy school yard.
Lily is happy with her group of friends, although she’s closer to two of them – Melissa and Chelsea. Lily can be a little bossy at times, particularly with friends Rachel and Lindsay. She is supportive of her younger brother, Manny, and troubled that her parents are arguing – although she hasn’t discussed this with her friends…
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This program’s film was produced at Highgate Primary in Adelaide, South Australia. Over a two month period filmmaker Christopher Faull worked with the Year 5 students exploring the subject, developing characters, then workshopping the scripts. The students performed all the main acting roles in the dramatised videos, and fulfilled all of the secondary roles in supporting the professional film crew. Every detail of the story and its staging was approved by the students, and every word of dialogue is their own.