The middle school years can be a challenging time for many students as they navigate the turbulent waters of adolescence. Building and maintaining friendships becomes a central theme. To facilitate this, educators must emphasize the key components of friendship. Our Middle School Acting Like a Friend Visual Goal Poster serves as a vibrant reminder of the four critical steps to fostering genuine friendships.
Friendship in Middle School: Why it Matters
In middle school, students undergo immense personal growth. Their social circle evolves, and the nature of friendships changes. Teaching them how to act like a friend ensures they nurture positive, healthy relationships that can provide support during these transformative years.
Unveiling the “Acting Like a Friend” Goal Poster
This downloadable poster has been designed keeping in mind the visual and interactive learning preferences of middle school students. It portrays the four quintessential steps to building and sustaining meaningful friendships:
- Learn About Others: Being a good friend starts with genuine interest in understanding another’s likes, dislikes, dreams, and fears.
- Share About Yourself: A friendship is a two-way street. It’s equally important to open up, letting friends into your world.
- Spend Time with Them: Quality time strengthens bonds. Be it studying together, participating in sports, or just chatting; time invested is a reflection of the relationship’s importance.
- Keep the Friendship Equal: It’s essential to ensure reciprocity. Both friends should feel valued and appreciated, with neither overshadowing the other.
Lesson Plan: Cultivating Genuine Friendships
Objective: By the end of the lesson, students will understand the four key steps to acting like a friend and reflect on how they can incorporate these into their friendships.
Duration: 20 minutes
- Introduction to Friendship (5 minutes)
- Initiate a class discussion about what students think makes someone a good friend.
- Introduce the Middle School Acting Like a Friend Visual Goal Poster and its significance.
- Interactive Exploration (5 minutes)
- Display the poster and discuss each of the four steps.
- Encourage students to share personal anecdotes for each step.
- Reflection Activity (5 minutes)
- Ask students to think about a recent interaction with a friend and identify which of the four steps they practiced and which they could improve upon.
- Share reflections in pairs or small groups.
- Conclusion (5 minutes)
- Emphasize the importance of practicing these steps daily.
- Encourage students to place personal copies of the poster in a spot where they’ll see it daily.
Wrapping Up
Friendship is a journey, and the Middle School Acting Like a Friend Visual Goal Poster is the map. By consistently following its guidance, middle school students can ensure they’re on the right path, creating relationships filled with trust, understanding, and mutual respect.
Sample Video
Students learn best from watching real students their own age model skills. Try out this sample video-modeling lesson below. We offer our entire Social-Emotional Learning platform free for 30 days here!
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Free Middle School Friendship Skills Material
