Making
lesson 11:
seasons of a friendship: spring
Lesson Summary
This lesson builds on student understanding of the different seasons of a friendship, covered in Lesson 10. In this lesson, students focus on the season of “Spring”, and learn the different actions they can choose such as trust, listening and kindness to be able to grow and develop their new friendships. If your students require additional depth and understanding please also complete Part 2 of this lesson.
Purpose
Purpose: In this lesson students understand what actions and behaviours they can choose to help grow a new friendship.
Process
Time Needed: 25-30 minutes.
Activity: Show me the season! (5 mins)
Intro: Friendship Season Recap and Intro to Spring (5 mins)
Activity: Class Discussion and Mind Map (5-10 mins)
Activity: Spring Poster (10 mins)
Debrief and Reflection (5 mins)
Materials & downloads
For this lesson, you will need the following:
Plain Paper
Coloured pens or pencils
Student workbook / notebook
Activity: show me the season - (5 mins)
How it works:
Explain to the students that the teacher will call out each season. Each season has a different action the students must complete when it is called.
The students can walk around the space or classroom whilst they wait for the next season to be called. Teacher Tip: Increase energy and enjoyment and add some music whilst completing this activity.
Spring: Become a seed and crouch down!
Summer: Be the sun and do a star jump!
Autumn: Become falling leaves by standing and swaying your arms slowly.
Winter: Become a tree and be still.
Complete this activity for 2-3 minutes.
Debrief:
This activity gets us up and moving and reminds us of the four different friendship seasons we looked at last lesson. Each season has different characteristics and means we may feel and act in different ways. Our friendships are just the same
intro (5 mins)
In the previous lesson (Lesson 10), we learned that just like nature, our friendships also experience the four different seasons of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.
Ask students to share what they can remember about each season before focussing on Spring.
Ask the students what changes they notice in nature and friendships during Spring. Ideas may include a focus on things growing and getting bigger and stronger, new life and bright colours.
Just as Spring is a new beginning for plants and animals, the friendship season of Spring is when new friendships begin, like seeds being planted. Just like plants, friendships need time and care to grow.
Introduce the concept of trust.
This can be seen as the “soil” we plant our seeds in and is important to grow a healthy friendship. Trust means we are honest, kind, and keep our promises. This helps our new friends to feel safe and cared for. Every time we show we can be trusted, our friendship grows bigger and stronger, just like a flower blooming in Spring.
Activity: class discussion and mind map (5-10 mins)
Now we know Spring is all about growing our friendships, what can we do to help the friendship grow and develop? Ask students to share their ideas and the teacher can write their answers as a mindmap on the board.
Ideas may include:
Inviting someone to join a game
Sharing your favourite toy or book
Giving them a compliment
Asking questions to get to know them
Listening to the person when they are sharing their thoughts or feelings
Taking turns
Keeping promises - If we say we are going to meet someone in the playground at lunchtime, we match our actions to our words!
Asking to borrow their pencil/book/toy instead of just taking it
Debrief:
All of our kind thoughts, words and actions act like seeds. When we show care and kindness towards our new friends, they can grow strong and healthy, just like flowers and animals in Spring.
Activity: spring poster (10 mins)
Students are to design a poster to represent how a student in the season of Spring can grow their friendship with a new friend.
Below are some Ideas of what the poster could include:
Actions and ideas shared in the previous activity or a drawing to represent the actions, such as sharing or including someone in a game.
Students can write words/feelings on flowers or leaves to show which actions make a friendship blossom.
Students may also want to use other ideas about the season of spring by drawing flowers or plants, the sun, rain or baby animals to decorate their poster.
Encourage students to be creative and use coloured pens or pencils to decorate their poster!
Debrief:
Look at all the seeds, flowers, and ideas on your poster! Each one shows something we can do to help a new friendship grow. It is important to remember that not every friendship grows in the same way or as quickly as another, and that’s okay! What we want to focus on is the actions we can take to positively support that new friendship.
Lesson Debrief:
Spring is an exciting time as we find ways to expand and develop our new friendships. Every small act of kindness, trust and respect helps our friendships grow a little bit more. We don’t suddenly have a great friendship straight away, we have to work at it a little bit each day by using our kind words and actions.
