Friendship Unit: Building a Meaningful Classroom Community
Context:
The following artifact is a unit on friendship that I developed during my student teaching in a first grade classroom. In this unit, the class read several books about friendship and discussed ideas relevant to friendship themes such as how to be a friend, how to make friends, what we can learn from friends, and why friends are important. Each day the students had opportunities to express what they had learned about friendship through writing and illustrations. In addition, we conducted class meetings addressing problematic issues between friends and created art work depicting what friendship looks like in first grade. This unit spanned one week and culminated in a Valentine's Day celebration of friendship. I have included the unit plan and various lessons within the unit, examples of student work, and photographs taken during the unit.
UW TEP Goals and Targets:
Goal 1: Effective Teaching, Assessment and Evaluation
Learning Target 1A: Subject Matter Knowledge
The TEP student will demonstrate deep knowledge of subject matter and create learning experiences that make subject matter meaningful and understandable to students.
Learning what qualities make good friends and how to be a good friend, as well as recognizing when someone is being a friend to you, are all important steps in learning how to interact and participate in a community of learners. I worked hard to find books and activities that would further demonstrate and develop these central concepts for the students in my class. In addition, I set a consistent example of respect and of care for my students in all of my actions and conversations. In this way, the students could see my appreciation of friendship and dedication to community building in daily interactions.
Goal 2: Meeting the Needs of Diverse Learners
Learning Target 2A: Learning and Development
The TEP student will understand how students learn and develop, and will provide learning opportunities that support intellectual, social, and emotional growth.
The transition from self-absorption to social interaction and responsibility is a difficult leap for many young children as they enter the primary grades. Cooperation, sharing, and reaching out to help and support those around us are important skills as children progress in maturity and responsibility. Learning how to be a good friend is not easily mastered; however it is essential that children receive a foundation for interacting and responding to those around them at an early age. In creating these lessons on friendship, I pushed myself to be aware of and sensitive to where the students were developmentally. At the same time, I supported and challenged them as they began to discover the value in friendship and community.
Reflection:
One of my biggest goals is to create within my classroom a strong and supportive community where my students can grow together in a positive and safe environment. Ideally, this community will be one that is based on trust, cooperation, and a sense of kindness and belonging. In this community, children know each other well and will reach out to each other with friendship and support. I developed this friendship unit with my goal of community in mind, hoping that by focusing on concepts of friendship and community values in a large class setting, the students would become more aware that these are important issues to consider. I also felt it was a significant subject to address with the class because of reoccurring incidents inside and outside of the classroom surrounding friendships and inclusion. A few students in particular had become so involved in their growing friendships that their social interactions had turned exclusive and had begun to interfere not only with academic activities, but also with the classroom community. First graders are just beginning to understand responsibility and the idea of having respect for others, yet they are still finding out about themselves and viewing the world in relation to self. The current state of the classroom inspired me to consider where my students were at in this continuum. I was curious to find out what they knew about friendship and being a good friend, and how they would express what they knew in conversation and apply it to activities within an academic context. I began this unit with the hope that by focusing on friendship throughout the week, the themes and messages would stick with the children as they went about their days and surface in their interactions with their peers.
I entered into this unit knowing that the values behind friendship would be difficult ones to teach. After all, the social and emotional learning curve that occurs when children enter school is enormous. It is in school that many children first begin to make the transition from self-absorption to awareness that there are others around them to share, compromise, and interact with. Vivian Paley, in her book You Can't Say You Can't Play, explores these social relations among children and notes the difficulty that surfaces when young children enter school:
''The children I teach are just emerging from life's deep wells of
private perspective: babyhood and family...Then, along comes school.
It is the first real exposure to the public arena. Children are required to
share materials and teachers in a space that belongs to everyone.'' (1992, p. 21)
With this in mind I carefully, yet purposefully, began the friendship unit. I challenged them to think about friends that they knew and about what made those people special, attempting to get at the larger ideas behind friendship and being a friend. To my delight, the students did remarkably well with the topic. They were fascinated by the stories because they could apply them to their own tangible relationships. Their contributions to the discussions were well thought out and meaningful. Although only in first grade, these children knew how it felt to be left out, hurt, and picked on. They also had experienced being surrounded by friends who cared about them and enjoyed their company. The students spoke to this in our discussions and expressed it in their writing. I felt that many students did understand the concepts behind friendship such as giving, sharing, and helping.
After the unit was over, my cooperating teacher remarked in her evaluation, ''The friendship lessons have been really successful. We'll be feeling the benefits all year.'' However, my own evaluation took a different angle. Had these lessons made a difference for all of the students? Had the values reached the ones who needed them the most? Had the friendship quarrels and exclusive play games stopped? Unfortunately, I realized that habits are not easily broken and that a few lessons cannot completely solve big problems. Quickly placed in the middle of the school year, although engaging and worthwhile for some, the lessons may have been insignificant to others. Ideally, introducing a unit on friendship, tied with cooperation and sharing, would be best addressed at the beginning of the school year with community building in mind. With more time to spend on the unit and other connecting ideas, I could support the students in diving deeper into friendship and what it means to them and within the classroom. Taking more time with each topic, the ideas could be made more concrete and specific, giving more students a direct relationship to something they know and can relate to, and providing further entry points to those that need them. In my future classrooms, I will be aware of how immense and difficult these ideas are for children to grapple with, and how much time should be devoted to helping them grow and learn in these areas. Reflecting on the friendship unit has reaffirmed for me how important it is to help build a firm foundation of friendship and social skills at a very young age. It is from this point that the children of today's classrooms become the participants of tomorrow's communities.
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