Spring Fever

If your school is anything like mine, March is a LONG month.  March tends to be the time when students decide they are tired of school, tired of each other, and spring break is still three weeks away.  I have found that the main issues that keep me busy are girl relational aggression and general conflict so I decided I needed to be as proactive as possible and confront the problem head on.  My co-counselor and I put our heads together to plan "friendship refresher" lessons for all second thru fifth grade students. I found a lesson for second grade on teachingtolerance.org , a site that I use fairly often when I need lessons on diversity or friendship topics.  The original lesson was shared by a teacher in Oregon (great collaboration!) and can be found here.  I tweaked it to fit my needs as all educators do and ended up with a fun 35 minute lesson.

I started off with one of my favorite friendship books for the primary grades,  What's the Recipe for Friends?

 

Then, I moved to a Smartboard lesson I created that had images of cooking tools and ingredients. The students reviewed the book, and I checked for comprehension by having them share what ingredients Freddy had needed to make friends at his new school.  After brainstorming, I asked the students what other recipes they liked to follow at home, and they quickly named brownies, cookies, and PIZZA as common examples.

Earlier in the week, I had called around to several pizza stores to try and get pizza boxes donated for this lesson, as well as future ideas that may come up....after all, what child doesn't get excited when he sees a pizza box?!  Papa John's was happy to help me out (shout out!), which I really appreciated. 

 

The students and I discussed the basic ingredients needed for pizza:  crust, sauce, and cheese/toppings.  We related each part of the pizza to friendship skills that would help them make AND keep friends all year long (this was also on a Smartboard page).

Crust = Friendly thoughts that give you the right attitude to make and keep friends

Sauce = Friendly words

Cheese/toppings = Friendly actions

Then, the students got to make their friendship pizzas in teams and write their own ideas of thoughts, words, and actions on the paper pizzas I provided.  For second graders, I would suggest brainstorming ideas for each of the categories together before breaking into groups so the activity will not take as long. I also created examples and put them in envelopes in case a team got stuck during the activity.  We shared ideas that the teams brainstormed themselves once the pizzas had all been picked up (by me!) for delivery.

The kids seemed to love this activity and will see a reminder of their "friendship pizzas" each day when they go up on the second grade bulletin board in their hall.

Happy counseling!

Angela