Friendship in Action

What does it mean to be a friend? Challenge your class to find out through movement and tableaux.

To begin, spark a discussion about what friendship means and how you can foster it. Ask students: How do you know if someone is a friend? and What things do you like to do with your friends? As students list what friendship looks like, keep track of their responses on a large piece of chart paper.

Now, it’s time to put things on their feet! Ask students to create frozen pictures with items from the list, like “helping a friend out,” “making someone laugh” or “being there when someone is sad.” For each tableau, ask students outside of the picture to describe what they see and what feelings it evokes. You can even set these frozen pictures to music that you source from the students to enhance the emotions of the scene.

To culminate, have each student choose a gesture or phrase that came up during the activity and share it with a friend after class to let them know that friendship is golden.