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Antbassadors - Teachers' Notes

Green Gem:

1. What ‘bugs’ you about bullying?
2. Ant Art: Friendship badges, bands, bibs and banners.
3. Anty Uppy

Blue Gem:

1. It's An Ant's Life
2. Ant and Bug Search
3. Ants and Ladders

Purple Gem:

1. Leaping Leaves
2. Antbassadors
3. Antennae
   

Green Gem

What ‘bugs’ you about bullying?

A fun way of discussing what ‘bugs’ you about bullying and what can be done to stop this happening. Uses the red card and blue card system to generate discussion about bullying by altering them to be red bugs and blue bugs.

Scenarios, words and actions are read out loud and the group will then identify what they think those scenarios, words or actions mean by holding up the appropriate card; a red bug card will relate to an aspect of bullying; a blue bug card will relate to a helpful, positive or supportive statement.

Learning Outcomes:

• What ‘bugs’ you is an interactive game that promotes discussion on what we think counts as bullying and what isn’t bullying as well as identifying helpful solutions.
• The ‘bug’ coloured cards are held up in relation to the statement or actions read out by facilitators: children will hold up red bug cards that relate to words or actions that are perceived as bullying behaviour or hold up blue bug cards relating to helpful, positive and supportive statements.
• Children are encouraged to discuss as a group each individual scenario, testing their empathy and understanding of what is bullying and reinforcing any anti-bullying work within the school by ensuring that the underlying message on prevention underpins the activity.
• Red Bug Blue Bug can also be done online or at home with emphasis on creating your own bug cards and downloading the scenario’s available online at antbassadors.org and performing the activity with your family, testing what was learned at school.

Ant Art: Friendship badges, bands, bibs and banners

Purpose: To create an Antbassador club within your school.

Activity: Generate ideas and visual work for badges, bibs and banners to show others that this is an inclusive club for everyone and that the club is there to support the whole school community and make school a safe place for everyone. Ant Art is a portable activity and can be done in school, at your youth club, after school club and as part of home learning.

Learning Outcomes:

• Through creative engagement, pupils will share in the process of generating output with positive messages.
• Development of good communication skills through sharing of resources and ideas to achieve an end product.
• Being able to take what was learned at school into the holiday periods as home learning and fostering the same working ethos with friends, siblings and family members. Working within a community group or youth club setting will also outreach to a wider group of children.

Anty Uppy

Simple online game where children have to keep the niblet of corn in the air by clicking on it with the mouse button. The run of points scored stops if the niblet of corn touches the ground.

Learning Outcomes:

• builds good hand and eye coordination
• helps with counting and scoring
• not suitable for children who have difficulties using a mouse

Blue Gem

It's An Ant's Life

Ants are amazing creatures and have brilliant skills and super abilities. They can build homes for millions of their fellow ants, form ant bridges across a massive scale and travel for miles! As an Antbassador, you too have some amazing abilities, abilities that help you support your friends, share your games, your books and pencils and other things. You can look out for other children that are lonely or are being bullied and help them feel much better about themselves! If you were an ant, what amazing things would you do to help make the world a better place for everyone?

Activity: On large paper and in small groups (dependant on size of class), draw a really big ant on the sheet, remembering that ants have many arms and legs and draw or write next to your ant, all the amazing things your ant would do. To encourage true group work and cooperation, a large roll of paper up to 6 ft in length could be used getting everyone working on an army of ‘super ants’, one after the other and enabling neighbouring ants to compliment their neighbour!

Learning Outcomes:

• This activity will promote a good sense of teamwork, cooperation and remind all participants that we should be working together and helping each other, mirroring the collective nature of the ‘antz’ world and how working together generates solutions to what seem insurmountable obstacles!
• At the end of the activity, all groups will present their ‘super ants’ to the main group and talk through their ants’ unique character and abilities.

Ant and Bug Search

Interactive word search puzzle hiding ant and bug words in the grid. This can be played with a class or childen can play alone or in groups. To play children just click on a letter and it will be highlighted.

Learning Outcomes:

• Helps children identify letters and sequences of letters to form words
• Includes simple bullying words

Ants and Ladders

Interactive game based on the family favourite but with a distinctive twist. Can be played by children in pairs or with a teacher and a class. Before starting, discuss the layout of the board and show how the numbers are counted. The twist is that the children are encouraged to engage with a series of emotional statements that help guide them through the board. Use the mouse button to move the counter around the board and operate the dice by clicking on it.

Learning Outcomes:

• counting spots on the dice
• counting the jumps on the board
• counting in the correct direction
• thinking about their own actions and behaviours in a positive or negative way in the context of bullying behaviour

Purple Gem

Leaping Leaves

Resources needed are print-outs of the leaves (online) which are then labelled *bully* *angry* *different* *aggressive* *quiet* *popular* and so on. Demonstrate in a large group first, have two children volunteer, one to be a bully and one to be someone that has experienced bullying. The bully has to step on a leaf that they think might represent a characteristic of a bully or bullying behaviour. The *victim* of bullying stands on a leaf that they think might be a reason that a bully could target someone.

Print out as many leaves as you like and choose your own words to fill in the blanks on the leaves. Alternatively, get the children to draw their own leaves and words.

Learning Outcomes:

• An understanding of what bullying is and why people bully
• Leaping leaves to include decisions the *victim* can make to create calm around a certain situation
• Improved communication and reporting of bullying incidences
• Pupils gain a wider understanding of the context of bullying and how to tackle the issues
• Intervention skills and peer support skills via the activities

Antbassadors
An ‘Antbassador’ is very important role and will mean that ‘you’ are there to help and support those around you, including your teachers and when you are at home or with your family. Antbassadors online will enable you to learn how to become an ‘Antbassador’ and support your school, your friends and your family!

Antbassador Mind Mapping
Create your mind map of bullying! Develop and discuss what is bullying and ways we can work together to stop it happening! Print off the template on the screen of ‘What is bullying?’, ‘Who bullies?’, ‘Where can you be bullied?’, ‘What can we do stop bullying happening?’

Role Play
Role play being a good friend or someone that supports those with few or no friends through drama. This is about building friendships and understanding how to support and include everyone regardless of ability, disability, appearance, gender or race. Role play will also develop emotional intelligence in terms of safe intervention.

Antbassador Safety Plan
Creating a safety plan as a group on how to stay safe and who to turn to when help and advice is needed, will be a fun way of talking about a serious subject. It will get everyone together to create a plan that will help everyone stay safe and out of harms way. Work this up with help from the definitions activity done in the mind mapping part.

Campaign Planning
Children create posters or leaflets about what their roles and responsibilities are and advertise this across the school. They can also make their own merchandise creating messages and pictures on T-shirts etc. Resources needed are T-shirts, fabric pens and an inkjet printer for creating transfers for blank T-shirts.

Antennae

The activities finish by taking all that the children have learned so far to become an Antbassador by playing a game to see how emotionally sensitive their own antennae are!

This final game is in two parts - first the children make a pair of antennae to fit on their heads. Secondly, wearing their newly made antennae, they stand or sit in a circle with post-it notes on their foreheads. The notes have a bullying word written on them, but the child cannot see his or her own word. They then have to take it in turns to guess what the word is on their head by asking their classmates simple questions like *Am I a bully?* *Am I helpful?* and so on. When a child guesses correctly they can sit down/take the note off their heads. Some children may need to be helped quite a lot, depending on the difficulty of the words you choose.