Friendship Summary!

The Funky Monkeys began our Friendship challenge with the text The Three Questions, an old Tale by Tolstoy retold by John Muth. The boy in the story asks: What is the best time to do things? Who is the most important one? What is the right thing to do? These questions were an excellent starting point to our discussion of how to be a good friend. We next compared the following poem to the story

How to Be a Friend by Pat Lowery Collins

Keep a secret

Tell a wish

Listen

to

a dream.

Although very simple, we all agreed that the poem describes the very essence of what it is to be a friend. Students then compared the poem and text in their journals. The following day we read the cautionary tale How to Lose All Your Friends by Nancy Carlson.  This humorous book makes it very clear what NOT to do if you want friends. We then talked about what qualities we want our friends to have as well as what we would could offer a new friend.  This led us to Christian Taylor’s challenge to make new friends! Students wrote an ad for a new friend in their journals.  Students also started completing friendship coupons – this was a quick way to offer their friendship to someone new by completing the coupon and putting it in the new friend’s mailbox.

The Funky Monkeys are also looking to the future with Friendship.  This week we are working on pen pal letters to send to Martina McGuire’s class in Florida. Hooray! New friends!!

Standards addressed in this challenge:

·      CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.2
Recount stories, including fables and folktales from diverse cultures, and determine their central message, lesson, or moral.

·      CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.2.1.A

Follow agreed-upon rules for discussions (e.g., gaining the floor in respectful ways, listening to others with care, speaking one at a time about the topics and texts under discussion).

·      CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.2.1.B

Build on others' talk in conversations by linking their comments to the remarks of others.

·      CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2.5

With guidance and support from adults and peers, focus on a topic and strengthen writing as needed by revising and editing