Title: Is it hard to find a friend?

Lesson plan elaborated by: Magdalena Trysińska

Topic

Is it hard to find a friend? Reflections on friendship.

Target group

4th‑grade students of an elementary school.

Core curriculum

I. Literary and cultural education.

1. Reading literary works. Student:

1) discusses the elements of the represented world, separates poetic images in poetry;

2) recognises literary fiction; distinguishes and explains realistic and fantastic elements in works, with particular emphasis on them in realistic prose, science fiction or fantasy works;

5) discusses the functions of the constructional elements of the work, including the title, subtitle, motto, punchline, climax;

7) talks about plot events as well as sets the order of events and understands their mutual dependence;

9) characterizes the lyrical subject, narrator and characters in the read works;

12) defines the theme and the issue of the work;

15) explains literal and figurative meanings in texts;

17) presents his own understanding of the work and justifies it;

18) uses own experience and elements of cultural knowledge while interpreting the texts;

19) expresses own judgment about characters and events.

2. Perception of cultural texts. Student:

3) defines the topic and main thought of the text;

4) recognises the relations between different parts of speech (e.g. title, introduction, development, ending);

5) distinguishes between important and secondary information contained in the text.

III. Creating a statement.

2. Speaking and writing. Student:

5) talks about a text that he has read;

IV. Self‑education. Student:

5) uses general Polish and special dictionaries as well as a dictionary of literary terms.

The general aim of education

Educating the skills of making conversations on universal topics, including values.

Key competences

• communicating in the mother tongue;

• communicating in foreign languages;

• learning to learn;

• social and civic competences.

Learning outcomes

Student:

• indicates the topic and the main thought of the poem;

• extracts events;

• distinguishes between realism and fantasy;

• discovers and explains the moral resulting from a story;

• presents its own opinion and justifies it.

Methods / techniques

• giving: explanation

• problematic: directed conversation

• exposing: exposition, film;

• programmed: using computer, using e‑textbook;

• practical: subject exercises

Forms of work

• uniform individual activity

• uniform and differentiated group activity;

• activity in pairs;

• individual activity;

Lesson plan overview (Process)

Introduction

1. The teacher defines the purpose of the course: considerations about friendship and situations that are its „test”, in relation to the students' life experiences and to the text with a moral.

2. Explains that children will work with the literary genre, which a tale is. The teacher also emphasizes that a tale as a literary text does not necessarily correspond to the colloquial meaning of this word, which the pupils will learn during the lesson.

Realization

1. The teacher and students start the lesson „Is it hard to find a friend ?”. The students listen to the first part of the recording.

2. Then students go to the lesson „Is it hard to find a friend ?” on epodreczniki.pl and perform task 1: they read a comic book and tell the presented story. Let the students exchange their observations in the form of a free conversation.

3. Students stay on the lesson page in Polish and listen to the recordings of the recitation of Ignacy Krasicki’s story titled „Przyjaciele”. They confront what they heard, with their versions of the story (task 2).

4. The teacher asks about the content of the poem. The conversation should be directed with questions, e.g.: What is this poem talking about? Who is the main character? What happened to the bunny?

5. Due to the fact that I. Krasicki's tale contains archaisms and difficult words, it is necessary to explain incomprehensible words from the poem's text using the footnotes and dictionaries of the Polish language.

6. Then students move to interactive exercises in the content of the abstract. They perform tasks: 3, 4 and 5. Tasks involve indicating the words that express characteristics of the main character and completing sentences; putting in order the names of animals that appear in the text; searching for fragments depicting the refusal to help the bunny.

7. A conversation in pairs or groups about the situation presented in the poem; the teacher can instruct students to answer the questions in exercise 6 and other proposed by him:

• Why do you think the animals refused to help the bunny?

• How should friends behave in a similar situation?

• Was there true friendship present between the animals?

• How would you behave, being in the place of the bunny, and how in place of other animals?

The conversation should lead to a comparison of the events presented in the literary text with the life experiences of the students.

8. The teacher asks students why the poem by I. Krasicki, in their opinion, can be called a tale. Perhaps in the answers, the features of a tale will appear, which the teacher should emphasize in some way, for example by writing them on a board, e.g. animal characters, animals behave like people (they speak), teaching appears (moral).

9. Students perform an interactive exercise 7: completing the definition of a tale. Then they copy the definition to a notebook.

10. The teacher can use three additional lexical exercises (numbers 8, 9 and 10): creating adjectives from mixed up letters as well as creating a set of associations with the word „friend”, which will generate a close definition of the word for the students. In the last task (10), students come up with sentences describing a friend using three selected adjectives from previous exercises.

Summary

The teacher sums up the lesson and asks students to write down the following questions in their notebooks: What have I learned today? What was easy for me? What was difficult for me?

Homework

Describe your best friend. What does he look like? How is he? What does he like? What do you like him for? Write down your work in a notebook.

The following terms and recordings will be used during this lesson

Terms

Texts and recordings

Is it hard to find a friend?

Some people have life‑long friends. They know and love each other since childhood and share not only their toys, but joys and sorrows as well. Still, “eternal” friendship may be ruined in one brief moment. A moment when it turns out that the whole life is not enough to get to know a real friend...