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Lesson Plan

Be A Good Friend

Teaching Tip: Before role-playing, give children suggestions for movements. If someone doesn’t feel secure acting out on their own, encourage them to invite a friend to join in. Role-playing is a great teaching tool that can be used to encourage understanding and promote creative expression.

Woof! Woof!: The focus of this lesson is to encourage awareness of good manners through literature and creative expression.

Teaching with Clifford’s Big Idea: Be a Good Friend
As children experience relationships early in life, they learn that friendships can be both rewarding and challenging. Through healthy personal relationships, children can develop the foundation they need to socially grow as they mature.

Teach: Practice Makes Perfect!
Objective: The following activity nurtures essential:

  • language and literacy skills
  • social and emotional skills

Discuss definitions of words: courteous and polite. Have children role-play examples of friends being courteous and polite at school by taking turns, saying thank you, and sharing. Then read Clifford’s Manners by Norman Bridwell (Scholastic). Explain that friends have more fun working together and playing when manners are used. Ask children to recall ways that Clifford used his manners in the story. Cooperatively create a list of good manners to use in the classroom. Display list and review each day by briefly role-playing each manner.

Practice: I’m Courteous and Polite!
Objective: The following activity nurtures essential:

  • social and emotional skills
  • charting and graphing skills

Help each child place a sticky star on a classroom chart each time they model being courteous and polite, individually, or as a group. Set goals for rewards at 5, 10, 15, and 20 stars. Present “I’m Courteous and Polite” certificates to students when goals are reached. Help class decide on a group reward when everyone reaches their goal. What a fun way to recognize and promote good manners at school and home!

Extend: Learning good table manners is important at any age!

  • Help children learn more about good table manners by sharing visual examples of people using proper etiquette. Show children how to set a simple table with paper plates and plastic serving tools. Then have a classroom tea party, or picnic, to practice good manners and create good habits at the table. Take pictures to create a “Kids with Good Manners” bulletin board.

Clifford’s Library: These books support Clifford’s Big Ideas and reinforce valuable early literacy skills:

  • Clifford Goes to School by Norman Bridwell (Scholastic)
  • Clifford Barks by Norman Bridwell (Scholastic)
  • Make New Friends (Yoko and Friends School Days) by Rosemary Wells (Hyperion)

 

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