Have you ever thought about what it takes to be a good friend? Everyone wants a good friend—but friendship is a two-way street. In this social emotional lesson plan, kindergarteners and first graders are encouraged to think about the qualities of a good friend. As they are learning how to be a good friend, they’ll talk about valuable traits like being honest, caring, and dependable. To wrap up the lesson, students will work together to create a class agreement about friendship that can be posted for everyone to see.
Learning Objectives
Students will understand the qualities of a good friend and make agreements as a class for how they treat one another.
Introduction
(5 minutes)
Gather students into a circle, either seated, in chairs, or on the floor. Remind students about the raised hand attention signal and the talking piece you may have introduced in other activities.
Circle time always begins with everyone being welcomed into the circle. Model welcoming a student and then have each student welcome the student sitting next to them. Be sure to rotate who sits where so students introduce different classmates. Example: “Hello Anish, welcome to our circle!”
Optional: create a new greeting every week. For example, using a small ball or bean bag, have students toss the object to each other once they greet another student, then the student with the object greets the next student, etc.
Once every student has been welcomed, retrieve the talking piece.
SEL Focus - Relationship Skills: Tell students that today during their circle time, they are going to talk about how they can be good friends.