Friends - How Many of Us Have Them?
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Teacher Tips
Be sure to spend time helping students get to know each other and you, their teacher. Use activities that range from learning each others’ names to knowing things about the interests, talents, and families of others. Kagan Publishing and Professional Development (http://www.kaganonline.com/) has produced a set of activities on Smart Cards called "Classbuilding and Teambuilding" that will help the students and teacher get to know one another. It is not good enough that the teacher knows the students’ names and several facts about each; the goal is for all of the students to know one another, as well. When students and teacher know each other, they are more respectful and caring of each other and more likely to tolerate each others’ differences and find solutions to differences they do not understand.
Whodini was one of the first hip-hop music groups to establish a high-profile national following. Post the lyrics and play their rap song from the 1980s, called Friends, to help students think about and get excited about this inquiry unit about friends and communication skills.
The lesson from the Math TEKS toolkit is an excellent guide for handling the data once the students collect it while using the survey questions in this project. The activities guide helps students construct pie charts and bar graphs so they visually see the findings and then can report them.
Reaching Out by David Johnson is a very good teacher resource regarding relationships and friendships. Reaching Out has numerous assessments and activities to help students assess where they are in building relationships and to engage them in developing new skills. Kidscape.org has information for both students and adults.
Children’s books about friends may be a good starting place for discussing friendships. Your librarian can direct you to the titles that may be most useful. There are many books, such as Toad and Frog and Bernstein Bears, that address the friendship topic. Discussions in classrooms are less intimidating if students have a story line to discuss, rather than using their own personal experiences.
Students often want to know what other people think, and this survey that students create will drive them to find new information to fulfill this need. Students are asked to write possible choices for each of the survey questions. Any of the choices should be plausible, and each student completing the survey will select the one they think would be their top choice. This is not a "correct choice" answer, but a "top choice" answer. You are trying to get students to consider the many ways to think about each question.
With access to the school web space, you could create an electronic newspaper or a rap podcast where each group in the class would publish their rap or articles. The newspaper or podcast can be downloaded, and the IPod or CD shared in the school and taken home to share with parents. If you have school blog space or podcast space, this project is constructed to be viewed and published only with teacher permission. The findings and the rap or articles could be published for only the school and/or for the Internet, as your school policy permits.
All the discussions in this inquiry are going to be sensitive and at times controversial. Establish rules of discussion for the whole group as well as for the small groups. Select ROPES that seem to be essential in your group. It is recommended that you select one rule for each letter in ROPES, for a total of five rules. More than five is too many for everyone to remember and implement. You may give the list to the students to select the most important ROPES from their own points of view.
