Every Step You Take
EVERY | Complete, entire, all. When each individual or action is included without exception.
STEP | An action or movement often occurring as one in a series, such as the advance or movement made by raising the foot and bringing it down elsewhere.
YOU | A person, or people in general, being directly spoken to or acknowledged.
TAKE | Lead, guide, do. To move somebody or something from one place or situation to another.
(MATTERS) |Have important or significant effect on somebody or something.
Objective:
Make individualized footprints to provide students with an opportunity to reflect on the steps they can take to create a world without bullying. This activity is designed to help students recognize that every step they take individually helps unite all students along the path for kindness, acceptance, and inclusion.
Materials:
- PAPER: Choose from anything you have readily available, such as construction paper, card stock, poster board, or the backs of old file folders. Generally, size 8 ½” x 11” works best.
- PENCILS: Ideal for tracing the outline of a student’s own footstep as the lines are less likely to show.
- SCISSORS: Use to cut-out the “step.”
- PENS, CRAYONS, or MARKERS: Perfect for recording the student’s action on their “step.”
- TAPE or other ADHESIVE: Use this for posting the steps.
Pre-activity Discussion:
- Engage students in a discussion about creating a world without bullying. Include conversation around what peers, educators, families, and community members are doing to help young people feel accepted and included in their world. Ideas to encourage conversation include:
- Emphasize actions that students can realistically achieve in their own lives.
- Create a list of actions suggested during the discussion. Post the list so that students can view it and use it as a guide for their own action step.
Instructions:
- Give each student a piece of paper.
- Ask students to trace their footstep(s). Or, instead of tracing footstep, use a foot or shoe template.
- Cut out the footstep(s).
- Write action step inside the cut out(s).
- Each student puts their name or initial under the action (optional).
- Collect the “steps.”
- Post all the steps, creating a collective path of the individual footsteps on a hallway floor or wall, in the classroom, or even on each riser on a stairway.
- Invite the students to work together to create a visual of the world, which is then posted at the end of the path.
- If more than one classroom is involved, the path could lead from classroom to classroom throughout the entire school!
- Download the instructions for this classroom activity.
