"Shirt Day" Project - Persuasive Skills Project

This year I have worn:
Red to raise awareness about heart disease in women. Pink to fight bullying. Jeans to support our troops
AND MORE

It got me thinking, with all these great days and colors, how could I make this into an activity my students would learn from and get them involved outside of my classroom!

And thus was born the "___________ Shirt Day" Project

I used this for my speech class since students were really struggling with audience. In this project they have to consider three different types of audience, which is perfect.

The Basics: 

• To introduce the project I find out what day is being celebrated that they may not know about. This sparks their interest and lets them see a model of me showing them how to persuade.
• Individually, students picked a "day" that they felt the school should honor. They give a speech presenting the day and persuading the class to vote for their day. 
• The class votes and the top two "days" are the winners.
• In small groups the students make persuasive video convincing the school administrators to let the school celebrate one of the two days we voted as leaders.
• Students vote on the best videos
• For the grand finale: The administrators watch the winning videos and select which days they want to support.

In More Details:
This was a really great project to have students practice different approaches and audience.

The speech they presented to class focused on different ideas than the video they make later to convince administrators to let them celebrate.

Motivation:
This was a great project because it was REAL. Students knew that their videos would really be watched and that everyone in the school would have the opportunity to "win" because of their convincing videos. Now, part of this motivation came because I work at a private school and my students normally wear uniforms. Nonetheless I think most students would find it awesome if the school did something because of a presentation that they made.

This year I whipped it up last minute, so the worksheets and directions aren't perfect. I'll replicate it next year and give you links of where to get copies.

Anti-Bullying Pink Shirt Day

February 25th is  Pink Shirt Day in Canada and in other areas that have picked up the trend.

Here's the story behind the name:

In 2007 at a high school in Nova Scotia, a freshman boy was bullied for wearing a pink shirt. Two senior students, David Shepard and Travis Price, saw this and decided to do something. They went to their local discount store, and bought seventy-five pink women tank tops. They reached out to their male buddies via social media and the next day they handed out the pink tank tops to all of the other boys who put them on over their normal tops.The bullies were never heard from again, and I am sure you can imagine the love that the bullied boy felt that day.

In honor of these teenagers who took a moment to right the world and do their part to stop bullying, every year on February 25th, people are encouraged to wear pink shirts and do their part to end bullying.

Here are some activities and reading you can do with your classes to celebrate.

• Clean Paper
• Give each student a piece of paper. Have them crumple it up. Rip it up. Scribble on it. My students have jumped u and down on it. Give them about one minute. Then tell them you want the paper back, in perfect form. Give them about five minutes to try and make their paper "perfect" again. 
• Fill the Tube
• Similar to the paper activity, but messier! Give each student a tube of toothpaste and a plate. See how fast they can empty their tube of toothpaste. Now give them a spoon and tell them to put the toothpaste back in the tube.
• What lessons does this teach you?
• Where do you see this in life?
• Were any of you able to get your paper back to normal/toothpaste back in the tube? How long did it take?

You don't need to sacrifice a whole day to anti-bullying activities. You can still do a standard literature lesson with a bullying theme. Check out All Summer in a Day  by Ray Bradbury (You can find it in: A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories )

This is a fantastic story at a lower intermediate level. Lower grades may require more  scaffolding, but the

I have some pre-made lessons you can use.

• Have students make their own soundtrack for the story 
• Use a rhyming game to practice the vocabulary 

My favorite question to ask students is what they think happened next. Did Margot forgive the other students? Did she and her family return to Earth? Were the students nicer to her after this day? Was the teacher punished?

If you are focusing on research or nonfiction, have them research Pink Shirt Day and come up with a similar activity their school could do. Have them write up letters to propose to the principal and samples. It would be a great interactive product that I am sure the principal would love!

What about you? What do you do to support anti-bullying in your class?