Year 3
SEAL Unit: Getting On and Falling Out
Learning Opportunity / Drama Strategy / Activity / CommentRevisiting the skills of friendship / v Role on the Wall
v TIR / Meeting
v CIR as Superhelpers
v Hotseating
v Role play
v Circle of Testimony
v Whole Group Drama / Mime / v Using the Assembly story (see Theme Overview book) children to do character outlines for either just the old woman how she was at the beginning and end of the story, or in groups, for the old woman, Leroy and Rani. This strategy could be used to explore feelings when we fall in and out of friendships, and which is the better feeling to have?
v TIR as the town major (mayoress?!), CIR role as kind villagers: call a meeting to ask for their help to stop the old woman turning everyone unkind. Use Chn as superhelpers or experts in friendships to change the woman’s views. This is just one idea for a Meeting. The same strategies could be used but with different roles and purpose.
v Teacher (or confident child) could be the old woman and the class ask her why she is being so horrid and trying to upset all their friendships? (This is often a playground scenario with Vigo children) If the teacher plays the old woman he/she can manipulate the dialogue to expose or discuss any relevant class friendship issues.
v This could be followed directly from the book or you could re-write the resource cards or get the children to make up their own.
v Children share a positive thing that a friend (un-named) or friendship means to them. This strategy could be used at anytime in the lesson but possibly at the beginning to start the class thinking about friendship and/or at the end to confirm their ideas learnt. There are some ideas in the book.
v The majority of the class are engaged, individually, in some form of mimed activity (e.g.cleaning windows, building something, making something, sports etc.) The other chn (10 chn?) go around giving out ‘friendship tokens’ (as per the story) appropriate to the action. These have to be verbalised by the giver. This strategy could happen all at once or children could take it in turn to speak so that everyone hears what they say.
Learning Opportunity
/ Drama Strategy / Activity / CommentRevisiting anger
/ v Group sculpture /Still Imagev Role on the Wall
v TIR / Mantle of the expert / v In groups of 4, 3 of the children are sculpted into a firework or rocket scene in 3 parts: fuse, explosives, bucket of water. At a signal from the teacher (or the sculptor) the firework could come to life: the ‘fuses’ act out and say how they are feeling after something has ‘triggered’ them and then the firework begins to ‘explode’ but the ‘bucket’ quickly says all the right things to stop the explosion. This obviously involves the firework exploding which is what were trying to teach the children not to do(!) so the emphasis must be on the buckets.
v A variation on the strategy: here the children can draw themselves – triggers on the inside, calming down ideas on the outside.
v Teacher could take on role as stressed parent, friend or another teacher who has a person they are trying to help. This ‘person’ (obviously you can expand and develop this character as much as you like) needs help in ‘calming down’ but TIR says …”I have tried everything but nothing works. Therefore I have come to this class because I have been told they’re experts at calming down and not exploding and could they please give you some ideas.”
Making Up
/ v Role playv TIR / Mantle of the expert
v Conscience alley
v Collective role
v Hotseating / v As per the book or your own conflicts that might more relevant to your class: children in groups act out the conflicts. This could be done before any discussion on win-win situations just to see how the children react and what they say.
v As above the scene could be set with someone needing advice on how to help s.o. else solve a conflict
v First do this with win-lose comments for each conflict. Groups could take a different conflict. Then do again for a win-win solution, emphasizing the more positive aspects of this way of solving conflicts.
v Sitting In a circle, in turn, children voice their win-win solution to the same conflict. This gives a wider range of solutions for all to hear.
v Using a fairy tale or ‘good fights over evil’ theme from a traditional tale (or make up your own stories), someone could take on the role of having just resolved a conflict and the chn could ask the person in the seat how they resolved it.
Ongoing activities
/ v All the above plus more! / v At anytime in class if there is a situation linked to any of the above themes, you could use the strategies mentioned to act out the actual conflict, or ‘trigger’ or friendship argument and model positive ways to act or better still avoid in the future.HIAS healthy schools website: SEAL C Ince 1