Expanding Friendships

Even though it was a short month, we were able to cover some really important concepts about friendship that I think will have a positive impact on my classroom community.

Week 1             How do people become friends?

·      We started off this theme by watching the Video of Charlie and Jack with the focus questions   "Are these two animals friends?  What proof can you find in the video?"  They had really great ideas about what makes a friendship and had no problem providing evidence that these two were indeed friends. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJjWwr-AjiQ

·      Students used the app Inspirations to complete a Friendship Map and were prompted to discuss:  What types of friends do you have?  How are they connected to you?  How do people become friends?

·      Then I asked them to list friends they have in the class, friends in other classes, and people in class I don’t know very well.  This provided me with great information for my next lesson.

·      We watched Jesse's Friendship Challenge.  As always, the students were thrilled to see Jesse and learn a bit more about him.

·      I told them we would work on Jesse's challenge next week and I challenged them to choose one person to try to make a connection with over the next week, even if it was just a smile or saying hello.

Week 2            Getting to Know Each Other

Jesse’s challenge inspired our next lesson:  Using the list from last week of ‘people in class I don’t know very well,’ I assigned the students partners to learn more about.  They were given an interview form full of questions they could ask to get to know their partner.  Then they worked with their partner to create a Google Slideshow to introduce their partner.  First each person created a slide to tell what makes their partner unique; then they worked together on a slide to show things they have in common.  This lesson happened to coincide with Valentines Day and it was a great way to talk about why it is important to be friendly to everyone in the class/school, not just our friends.  The students really enjoyed this task and worked really hard to show what they learned about each other.

Week 3            How to Be More Friendly 

Generally the students in my class are pretty friendly, but I have noticed that some students are excluded from certain social groups.  So this week I wanted to encourage my students to be friendlier to people in the room (and school) that they are not ‘friends’ with.  I started the lesson by reading The Invisible Boy, which helped to generate a discussion about how we can make others feel more welcome and included in the class.  This provided some ideas on how to be friendlier and students chose one idea that they could work on for the week.  Afterwards we visited the Kids Health website to read about cliques. http://kidshealth.org/en/kids/clique.html My students recognized a lot of the situations and problems described on the site and they responded positively to the suggestions provided on what can be done about cliques.  In gym class later that day, I noticed a few of my groups making a real effort to include other students by inviting them to join them in a drill.

This lesson provided a great lead in to Pink Shirt Day so when it came time to make our Pink Shirt Pledges, the students were ready!  I think we touched on some really important concepts this month that we can continue to build on for the rest of the year.  It is difficult for students at this age to make big changes with friendships, but if they can open their minds a bit more, it is a move in the right direction.