2nd Grade Friendship Club

At Cherry Park, all second graders are members of Friendship Club. This week, we spent time everyday learning the different parts of Friendship Club. We started with the "Teaching Peace" song, a song we sing at the start of every Friendship Club meeting. We enlisted the help of some third graders who were part of Friendship Club last year. These students came in and helped teach the our new second graders the song.

Below is a video of the third graders. From left to right are Irina, Mary Jane, Alva, Gabriella, Victoria, Max, and Adrian.

One of the most important parts of Friendship Club is solving conflicts peacefully. We teach our students 7 strategies that they can use to solve conflicts. Students need to try 3 strategies before they come to a teacher. It's a great behavior management tool! It rarely gets to the point where students need to tell a teacher because they're able to solve conflicts peacefully and on their own. This is the poster with the strategies that all second grade teachers have displayed in our classrooms.

Below is a picture of Alva and Gabriella, two third graders who are demonstrating the Rock, Paper, Scissors strategy.

 
When students use one of the strategies, they are asked to explain to the rest of the second graders what strategy they used and what the situation was. In this video, Kyra and Julia explain how they used the Share and Take Turns strategy.

More to come on Friendship Club later!!