In this lesson, students learn about what it means to belong and how to include others. Students will identify similarities and differences between themselves and a partner but understand how they are still part of the same community.

This lesson provides teachers with support for using text-dependent questions to help students derive big ideas and key understandings while developing vocabulary from the text Blue Willow. Janey's father is an immigrant worker and this forces Janey and her family to move around every few months, but Janey finds a friend named Lupe and a place she would like to call home permanently. Janey has to go to Camp Miller School for immigrant children like herself and she finds once again she must learn whether the new teacher will be a friend or just another teacher like the ones before her.

This lesson provides teachers with support for using text-dependent questions to help students derive big ideas and key understandings while developing vocabulary from the series of poems, Danitra Brown Leaves Town. Danitra and Zuri are two city-girls and best friends, and Danitra goes away to her auntĺ䁥_s house for the summer. These poems tell a story about how the girls stayed in touch by writing letters to each other, and how they discovered that they could have fun apart from one another while still remaining friends.

Carl Erskine's core values of inclusion and loyalty are illustrated in the story of his life-long friendship with Johnny Wilson. This clip is 3:25 minutes.

Students make predictions about "Bridge to Terabithia" and its characters, complete character studies, and relate the characters' experiences to their own as they identify ways to make and keep friends.

A picture book for grades 2-5. Tells the story of a lonely fox who lives on an island and decides to grow a garden. He is initially frightened of a bee who comes to the garden, but eventually learns of the bee's usefulness and they become friends. Inside the illustrations are a series of rebuses that, when decoded, tell the story of how bees pollinate flowers and make honey. Decoding the rebuses teaches students not only the ecological functions of bees, but also the mathematical principles of PEDMAS/BODMAS.

This project was designed to have students read as story and evaluate and analyze the entire book to answer one driving question. Students will work on determining what makes a good friend and what characteristics they tend to look for in a friend. There are mini activities to get the student's minds thinking instead of just having them get right into the assignment. Inquiry projects force students to analyze and think about the work they're completing.

This lesson provides teachers with support for using text-dependent questions and Common Core literacy strategies to help students derive big ideas and key understandings while developing vocabulary using the text, "Marven of the Great North Woods." To keep their only son, Marven, safe from the influenza epidemic, Marven's parents decide to send their ten year old Jewish son far away to a logging camp filled with French Canadian lumberjacks. He copes with language and cultural differences while he learns his bookkeeping job and makes a wonderful friend.

This project is directed at elementary level students, with a first grade group in mind. Students will be researching and discovering what it means to be a good friend and then using gained knowledge to demonstrate what good friendship looks like.

This course explores the nature of love through works of philosophy, literature, film, poetry, and individual experience. It investigates the distinction among eros, philia, and agape. Students discuss ideas of love as a feeling, an action, a species of ‘knowing someone,’ or a way to give or take. Authors studied include Plato, Kant, Buber, D. H. Lawrence, Rumi, and Aristotle.
This course is part of the Concourse program at MIT.

This lesson provides teachers with support for using text-dependent questions and Common Core literacy strategies to help students derive big ideas and key understandings while developing vocabulary using the text, "Sing to the Stars." Ephram loves to play the violin, and when he discovers that a blind neighbor was once a musician, but stopped playing the piano due to a family tragedy, he encourages the man to return to his music. Each encourages the other, and they perform together at a community concert.

Julian meets Gloria, a new girl in his neighborhood. Together they make a wish kite, with wishes fastened to its tail; both wish for lasting friendship.

This website is a tribute to the intellectual curiosity of young people. We know that they have
questions about all the big ideas that have engaged philosophers throughout the ages. What they
don’t have is a way to discuss those questions with other people, especially in an educational
setting.
That’s where you come in! By using this website, you’ll provide your wonderfully intelligent
and boldly inquisitive students with the opportunity to engage in a range of philosophical
discussions about issues that other students their age have told us were the most pressing ones in
their lives.
You may be wondering how you can do this without having any philosophical training. You will
be relieved to discover that teaching philosophy to secondary school children does not involve
giving lectures on the great philosophers of the past or the central problems of Western
philosophy. What is does require is that you commit yourself to giving your students the
opportunity to discuss philosophical questions among themselves.
We have tried to make this as easy for you as possible. We have created webpages devoted to
different philosophical issues that students have told us they want to discuss with their peers. On
each page, you will find a variety of different film clips. At the end of each clip, questions for
discussion appear on the screen. If you just pause the clip, you or a student can read the question
out loud to begin a philosophical discussion.
Your role is to facilitate that discussion, not tell the students what to think about anything; your
role is to assist students so that they can have a productive discussion with one another. For even
though children may be natural-born philosophers, they are not born ready to discuss issues with
their peers. That’s what we hope to help them with on this site.
Because “all” that the teacher has to do is to assist the children in their philosophical discussion,
it doesn’t require any special philosophical knowledge to teach philosophy to secondary school
children. All you need to know is how to facilitate a discussion among your students and, of
course, how to navigate this website so you know how to get to the material you need when you
need it!

In the story Wings, Ikarus Jackson is shunned and tormented by his peers, as well as community members because of his unique physical appearance.