Friendship Unit

Can you believe my luck? My SA has asked me to do a unit on friendship! Not only is this a great way to build the classroom community, but it also ties in very well with my inquiry project.

There are two parts to the BC Physical Education Curriculum that fall under this unit:

• Social and Community Health: abuse, bullying, friendship, promoting health
• Mental Well-being: helping self and others identify and find support for stress, anxiety, depression

Collaborative/Group Work

Part of my inquiry into inclusive education is about collaborative group work, which fits really well into this Friendship Unit. Working together as a class is also a key way for students to demonstrate their learning about friendship and caring for others.

Some of my plans:

• A self-assessment survey to capture how much interest their is in this topic, and how included and welcome students feel in the class, as well as their thoughts on group work.
• Create a class charter for group work. I had a wonderful chat with Dave Dunnigan about Building Collaborative Class Charter and he went over his method in great detail.
• I am considering offering students the opportunity to work in groups of their own choosing IF they can demonstrate that they can work effectively in a group not of their own choosing.

Further Resources

Here are some ideas, resources and strategies. I will be updating this list regularly, as I plan to use this post as a master resource file.

Literature

• When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead is a great book about friendship and compassion/open-mindedness towards homeless people.
  • Grand Conversations: a document that outlines how to encourage discussion in the classroom
  • Using a “Talk Move” to invite discussion.
• Enemy Pie is a nice children’s book on Friendship. I got it at Chapter’s last night.

Videos

• Here is a TED Talk about emotions and development.
• The first five minutes of the movie “Up!” are a perfect example of friendship.

Writing activities

• I’m going to use Leyton’s Schnellert lessons on Belonging in his article Engaging Middle Years Writers.
• My SA also wants me to use the section of Adrienne Gear’s Powerful Understanding called Understanding Others.
• Friendship Recipe: this is generally a primary activity, but I believe it’s possible to adapt this to older years.