The Grade 2 Learning Luminaries: Friendships

"The only way to have a friend is to be one"

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

This week, the discussions and activities for our unit of Who We Are, focussed a lot on friendships.

Relationship circles

We kicked off the week by making relationship circles. This was a lovely visual representation for the students to see while there may be many important relationships in our lives, there are some relationships that are more important to us, than others.

Thoughts and actions

Our thoughts become our actions. Based on this idea, which they uncovered, in small groups the students discussed specific social-emotional scenarios between friends. The students were tasked with hypothesizing what the thoughts of the friends may have been to have resulted in the specific actions. They displayed an understanding of what is considered appropriate and inappropriate within a friendship, by being able to identify whether the scenario was a negative or positive one. They were able to delve even deeper, by being able to suggest what the appropriate response should have been.

Forest of Kindness

In an effort to nurture our friendships within our classroom, it was a shared opinion that it would be valuable to share positive words of affirmation and kindness with each other. As a class, we discussed the various ways in which we can communicate with others, writing words being one of them. The students were tasked with writing a positive and kind message on a Christmas tree ornament for their friend to paste onto their tree. The students will add more ornaments of kindness next week.

The kind messages ranged from some of them thanking the person for being a good and helpful friend, to a few messages acknowledging their friend's superb soccer or basketball skills. Some messages even complimented the personality attributes of the friend. The students were intentional and proudly carried out the activity.