Over the last few weeks we have brought you some blog posts on the importance of classroom routines, goals and establishing classroom community at the beginning of the school year. Once some of these basics are covered, friendship skills can be a great topic to explore next. You may have already engaged your class in some 'get to know you' and 'all about me' activities - some discussion about friendship and how to be a good friend will help your classroom community and ultimately the learning of your students as they are happy at school.
Discussing friendship
To engage your students in a lesson on friendship:
- first read a story, The Little White Owl
(amazon link) is a great one
- make an anchor chart or poster with ideas for being a good friend
- Check out this pin for an anchor chart and ideas
- ask students to think of experiences they have had with friends and how these experiences reflected positive friendship - ask them to turn and talk to a peer and recount these ideas
- have students listen to some short scenarios and determine who is being a good friend and why/why not
(amazon link) is a great oneFriendship poster
I did a sketch on instagram today and several followers asked for it to be made into a coloring page. I took the opportunity to create a poster for you as well. Both are perfect to accompany a lesson on friendship - especially with a little 'owl' twist.
Find it in Google Drive HERE
Owl friendship posters
We also added a more comprehensive friendship skills poster pack to our store today. It includes 10 engaging visuals to discuss the traits of a good friend. A blackline version is included, of each poster, these can be used as coloring pages or as a writing stimulus in student journals.
I'd love you to stop by the blog again - and read the newsletter - for some more owl and friendship skills posts later this week.
