Southwest Leadership Academy Charter School's 3rd Grade Girls Learned About Friendship

In February, Mr. Spy’s 3^rd Grade Girls class took a close look at the term friendship.  Lauren did a great job explaining what it means to be a friend.  She also shared with the girls that while maintaining a friendship is not always easy, as long as they respect you and positively influence you, it is worth the effort.  

The girls did a great job reminding each other what a good friend should do and how a good friend should behave.  It was remarkable to watch the girls take ownership of and to be intentional in applying these traits.

 For their culminating activity, the girls created a recipe for their ideal best friend.  They listed the “ingredients” their best friend would have and explained why they are important to them.  It was a fulfilling and worthwhile experience that provided a real world take away. Thanks, Lauren!!

Community Resources

As you plan for this month's lesson, the following resources and ideas might be helpful.

Click here to view the slides..

Click here for this month's family newsletter in English and here for the newsletter in Spanish.

Click here for the link to the 2016-17 Classroom Champions Planning Manual to find even more resources on Fair Play!

This month's video lesson may contain several big points:

• Defining community as both social and geographic
• How to be a good member of a community
• How doing well in school strengthens the community
• The importance of everyone contributing to their community-- even kids
• A challenge to the students that may include:
• Identifying which communities they are a part of
• Reflecting on the importance of community or learning about people who have changed their community for the better
• Doing a service project as a class, as an individual, or as a family member

You may want to prepare for this video lesson by:

• Planning for vocabulary development as needed
• Thinking about your classroom, school, local, Classroom Champions, global and the digital communities you and your students are a part of.

There is a lot of information that will be listed below. It is up to you to pick and choose what information will work best for your students.

Vocabulary Development:

• For the littles, they often think of community as a physical concept. The older students may not realize that it's different that that.
• Have your students envision the communities of which they are a part by brainstorming.

Classroom Community:

• Make your classroom physically feel like a community: Teachers suggested placing photos of students up on the walls, have morning meetings, create a classroom contract, and think about desk placement.
• Having your students feel a part of the classroom community: Many teachers suggested Bucket Filling as a go to resource for helping students learn what it means to be a good classroom citizen. Click here to learn more. Think of ways to make your classroom a better place to be: Could that look like a bulletin board where students can place compliments for each others on sticky notes?

School Community:

• How does each student in the school doing well contribute to making the school a better place to be?
• Have the older students discuss and learn about children who aren't guaranteed an education. How does that affect a community? Two great resources on this include "I Am Malala" and "Three Cups of Tea". Click here to learn more about I am Malala. Click here to learn more about Three Cups of Tea.
• Have your students think of ways they can help make the school a better place to be:
• Buddy up with another class and create a mentoring relationship within your school
• Hold a Pay-it-forward day
• Participate in yard work day or take care of the school recycling
• Complete random acts of kindness
• Serve the people who serve students at your school and don't get as much recognition (custodian, librarian, secretary)

Local Community:

• Discuss how important different people are to making a vibrant community.
• For the younger students, you can discuss services your community offers. Take a field trip to the local bakery, etc. Some of the following books are great resources to help teach this:
• Miss Bindergarten Takes a Field Trip is a great resource to read about services in the community.
• Franklin’s Neighborhood
• City Green
• With the older students discuss what leadership skills are important to a community. Bring in the local mayor, or even a military member to discuss their experiences in different communities,
• Service projects that could benefit your local community include:
• Visiting the local senior's centre and singing, reading, making crafts, playing bingo, etc
• Support your local furry friends, make doggie biscuits and visit the shelter to hand them out.
• Work at a local area like the food bank and help out drives already in place.
• Decorate the sidewalks to bring a little cheer, or help shovel sidewalks in the local neighbourhood.
• You might help inspire your students to learn more about changing the community by reading:
• Ordinary Mary's Extraordinary Deed
• 999 Tadpoles
• There is a Tribe of Kids
• More books on the generosity, giving and sharing here.
• Here is a list of books about acts of kindness and service, including chapter books.

Classroom Champions Community:

• Help your students to see what it means to be a part of the Classroom Champions Community.
• Arrange a "mystery" live chat with another class- this can also tie in geography lessons.
• Discuss what an athlete's community is like- who is a part of it? Use the video lesson locations to help tie in the geography lessons as well.
• Use the resources on G+ to help engage the home community.
• Monthly Newsletters
• Olympian Parent Videos. Click here to see the playlist.

Digital Community:

• Help your students to learn about the importance of online safety using the following resources:
• PBS Kids offers the Webonauts Academy in which elementary school students can learn about safe online behaviours. When students have completed all of the Webonauts missions, they will graduate from the Webonauts Academy. Click here to go there!
• Digital Passport is an online program from Common Sense Media. The purpose of the Digital Passport program is to provide students in grades three through five with lessons and games for learning responsible digital behavior. Click here to go there!
• Common Sense Media also has K-12 resources to teach digital citizenship. Click here to go there!

Global Community:

• Help make your students aware of the changes that they can impact on a global basis. Some global learning projects include:

• Global Genius Hour Project
• Clean Water Day
• Global Classroom Project
• Kiva: Loans that change lives
• Plastic Bag Grab
• Projects by Jen
• Kids Guide to Canada
• RBC Make 150 Count
• David Suzuki Blue Dot
• Project Linus
• Pennies for Peace
• Read "If the World Was a Village" to help students learn about what it means to be a global citizen.
• Here is a more general list of community service projects from Kid Activities.

A few interesting resources for you as a learner:

• A 2010 New York Times article about the benefits of volunteerism for kids, as long as they are making a genuine contribution.
• Service is Connecting Your Passion to Someone Else's Need- Jamie Parker, TedX, Carnage Lake
• More than 2200 other TedTalks based on the theme of community can be found here.
• Is the desire to help innate in children? A thorough look at the development of altruistic behaviour from a child developmental psychology perspective can be found in this chapter.

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