Friendship

Everyone know what makes a good friend.  If your school days are anything like mine they are spent with kids seeking out other kids that are not being good friends and them telling you about them!  We talk a lot about tattling in our class so when the topic of Friendship comes up the kids are very familiar with what makes a bad friend, but we do not often enough take time to acknowledge when kids are being good friends.  That was are focus for the month.  We worked really hard on telling when kids were bing good friends.  Our end of the day community meeting focused on kids telling on other kids.  It didn't take long before the kids could easily find many ways through out the day when they saw people in our class doing really nice things for one another.  Just like every other monthly theme, I make it a goal of mine to keep the momentum going.  I think getting kids to focus on the positive instead of the negative is something worth spending a lot of time on.  It really helps to build that sense of community, especially this time of year when students know each other so well and are quick to get annoyed with little things.

Besides are daily community meeting we also took time to complete activities centered around Nate's challenge.  He asked us to think of ways that we can be good friends with our classmates.  The students created a list and worked on checking the list off.  They enjoyed the challenge and realized that "it is actually really easy to be a good friend", as one student told me!

My students also really love the app Keynote, so I should them a cool feature called "Instant Alpha" and they created Keynote presentations to show good friend qualities and bad friend qualities.  They love learning cool tech features and it makes it more engaging to combine our Classroom Champion theme with the new tech learning.

Common Core Standards:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.2
Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.2.A
Introduce a topic and group related information together; include illustrations when useful to aiding comprehension.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.2.B
Develop the topic with facts, definitions, and details.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.2.C
Use linking words and phrases (e.g., also, another, and, more, but) to connect ideas within categories of information.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.2.D
Provide a concluding statement or section.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.3.1
Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 3 topics and texts, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly.

Below are photos of students creating their Keynotes and a sample of a completed one: