EQ: What happens when a friend does not like what you like?

ELA / Activity: Friends Getting Along

Learning Target Speak in Complete Sentences

Materials / Resources

Do You Want to Be My Friend? Eric Carle

Character cards on lanyards

Procedure

1. Show students the cover of the book. Ask them what they think the book could be about. Have them justify their responses.

2. Ask students how they think the elephant on the cover of the book will answer the mouse’s questions. Work with their responses to model complete sentence answers. For example, “An elephant would not want to be a mouse’s friend because a mouse has no trunk.” (In the play, a student usually answers the mouse’s question by saying, “No, because you don’t have a trunk.”)

3. Turn to the dedication page and ask students to identify the animal that has a tail like the one pictured. Turn the pages to show them that the tail just keeps going. They will know the animal is a snake, but it’s fun to guess how long that snake will be.

4. Ask students to predict the kind of animal the mouse is questioning on each page by looking at the animal’s tail. Continue working with students to use complete sentences as they formulate each animal’s response to the mouse’s question. Encourage students to think about the animals’ characteristics as they respond to the question. For example, the monkey might say, “I don’t want to be your friend because you don’t eat bananas or you don’t hang from branches by your tail.”

Guided Practice

  1. After reading, tell students that they are going to perform a play about the story.
  2. Set the ground rules if this is the first play of the year.
  3. Not everyone will have a part in every play we perform. Some friends will be the audience. Talk about the importance of the audience.
  4. Explain that the teacher has a list of the names of all students in the class. She will put a check by the names of everyone in our play today.
  5. When we do the next play, students in the audience today will be chosen first. We will do many plays this year, so everyone will have many of chances to perform.
  6. Say “thank you” when given a part in the play. If you tell me that you don’t want to be the character you are asked to play, you will be part of the audience today.
  7. Show students the numbers on the animal characters so they will know how to line up. Begin and end with mice.

Reflection
After the performance, ask students if they can be friends with someone who does not like the same things they like? Point out that communication can help us compromise. We could try a new activity – something that neither of us has ever done before and find out that we both enjoy it.

Extension

It would be fun to do the play again having the animals answer yes to the question. Students could think of something the animals could teach the mouse to do or something the animals could learn from the mouse.