In this lesson students will explore the concept of friendship. They will discuss the qualities of a good friend and what makes a bad friend, engage in mindful movement activities, and watch a video to gather insights from other children. Students will also begin creating their ongoing Table of Friendship placemats project.
In this lesson, students will be introduced to the placemat weaving activity for the Table of Friendship project. To begin this activity, they will need their Self-Care & Confidence Sentence Starters (from Lesson 1) and the Friendship Sentence Starters from this lesson, pre-cut into strips. Each student will receive one of each (three total).
Throughout this unit, students will be creating their own placements for their Table of Friendship. These placements will be created by weaving paper. Students will begin to weave their placemats in Lesson 2 using the Self-Care & Confidence Sentence Starters (from Lesson 1) and the Friendship Sentence Starters. Be sure to collect students’ placemats at the end of the lesson. Students will continue to create additional sentence starters in the coming lessons but will not weave them into their placemats again until Lesson 7.
The students’ placemats will be completed by Lesson 7, when students are introduced to the ideas of Diversity and Belonging, and taught that everyone has a seat at the Table of Friendship. During Lesson 7, all of the placemats should be displayed together in the shape of a table, ideally on a designated board in the classroom.
On Slide 9, inform students of where their Table of Friendship will be displayed in their classroom.
To further represent the classroom diversity, it is great if students are given time and space to individualize their placemats. This could be, them picking out their own colored paper for the ‘loom’ of their placemat weave, or encouraging/allowing time for students to color or decorate their paper strips before weaving them into their placemat. Alternatively, students can write the sentence starters directly on colored strips of paper of their choosing, rather than using the provided sentence starter handouts.
Students will have the opportunity to reflect and share their feelings at the end of the lesson. Students can have their Feelings Wheel Handouts out to help name their feelings. They will not need these handouts before the lesson closing. At the end of the lesson, have students keep their Feelings Wheels in a safe space or collect them at the end of each lesson.