Let’s talk healthy friendships! As teachers, we want to give our students the tools they need to be successful, including surrounding themselves with positive friendships. Preparing them for the next step in their education—middle school—can be a daunting task. Middle school drama, hormone changes, and battling expectations make having positive friendships even more important. Teach students key skills including managing emotions, understanding boundaries, and maintaining healthy friendships to help set them up for success in middle school.
Our friends at Day One have free lessons and activities to help your students build these essential skills. Bring the framework for healthy friendships into your classroom with the Let’s Talk About Healthy Friendships Guide, which helps to:
Identify and Manage Emotions
- Talk about nonverbal clues that hint at how others are feeling.
- Brainstorm specific words that describe emotions and how those emotions make us feel.
- Activity: Work through strategies students can use to manage emotions.
Learn Boundaries
- Define boundaries and brainstorm examples of boundaries in a friendship.
- Talk about consent and what it means in a friendship, like asking for a hug.
- Activity: Working in pairs, read scenarios and decide how to respect boundaries in the given situation.
Manage Healthy Friendships
- Explore four words that describe a healthy friendship: independence, communication, respect, and equity.
- Predict the outcome of different actions between friends.
- Activity: Plan a skit, comic strip, or illustration to display new knowledge of emotions, boundaries, and friendships.
