Teacher manual
“Defining the Friendship Making the dictionary”
Topic: Friendship
Age Group: 11-15
With the support of the Lifelong Learning
Programme of the European Union
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the
author(s), and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.
Ethos advocates for moral
education in pre-primary, primary
and secondary schools.
www.ethos-education.eu
We hope this manual will
bring a new dimension to
your work and inspire
you to use the material
as a learning resource
for fostering tolerance,
understanding and
respect for diversity
among young people.
The following educational material was designed within the
context of a European project Ethos: Ethical education of
for a sustainable and dialogic future. The following 5
topics were chosen together with teachers and parents
coming from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia,
Spain, Italy, Germany and Austria through focus groups and
questionnaires.
• Respect
• Tolerance
• Responsibility
• Moral Values
• Friendship
Each material is accompanied by a suggestion of how it to
promote interactive discussion and critical thinking amongst
young people about ethical themes.
The resource can be used within diverse educational settings.
The most appropriate age group and related emotional
intelligence are indicated.
Materials can be used
according to the:
Creative Contents License
Non Commercial Share
Alike
Each material is accompanied by key learning points as
well as several interesting facts or pieces of information which
are intended to be used to provoke further discussion. Related
issues touched upon by each material are also provided.
Wherever possible we have included a short interactive
activity that can be carried out with students or a series of
suggested questions to ask, in order to introduce the topic of
each material.
Should you wish to explore certain topics or themes further,
each material includes a link to other related one. A general
list of additional educational resources related to the 5 topics
is also provided.
Author: Bruno Ćurko,
Marina Katinić
Editor: Bruno Ćurko
The material and accompanying text are designed as
standalone educational aids. In this respect, the manual is
intended to provide an overall framework from which you can
pick and choose the issues most relevant to your activities.
The manual can be used within any country or context as it
deals with issues, which are cross-border and universal.
1
Workshop “Defining
Defining the Friendship - Making the dictionary”
Age of the students: 11-15
15
Time: 90 minutes
Topic: Friendship
Author workshops and methods: Bruno Ćurko
Leading idea: Motivate students to think and discus about friendship. Teach
students to have argumentative discussions, to stand up for their views, thinking,
reasons and arguments.
Types of multiple intelligences involved:
Interpersonal intelligence
Intrapersonal intelligence
Verbal/Linguistic intelligence
Materials: Papers, pens.
Cognitive skills
•
•
•
•
Identifying friendship and
a the value of the friendship
Rethinking the means of friendship
Articulating one's opinion in a logically coherent way
Using causal reasoning to make further inferences, decisions and
predictions
• Anticipating consequences
• Distinguishing between facts and values
• Contextualizing the problems
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• Distinguishing between good and bad reasons
• Giving reasons for one's moral judgments
• Analyzing and clarifying concepts
Affective skills
•
•
•
•
•
•
Cordiality (affectothymia): show affection for your peers
Tolerate different opinions
Empathy: an emotional response to other people’s emotions
Cooperation with the others
Flexibility: acceptance of inclusive or conflicting situations.
Assertiveness: standing up for your right to fair treatment
How to carry out the workshop:
-
Workshop leader first explains to students how a famous publishing house
publishes 'children dictionaries' or 'dictionaries'. They are being explained
what is publishing house, who is the editor etc. (3-5 minutes)
-
Then the workshop leader says to students that they will play game of making
a dictionary. Workshop leader will be the editor; students will be the writers
on the new dictionary. (2 minutes)
-
The workshop leader must try to define some simple ordinary term as an
example, like carrot or cabbage. He must ask students to define the carrot.
Some students most likely will say that carrots definition is: "Carrot is a
vegetable". Workshop leader must ask other students what is missing. Then
someone will probably claim that “Carrot is red vegetable”. Then, once again,
workshop leader must ask other student what is missing. Then, all together
will try to create good carrot definition. Good definition must be clear, simple
and understandable to everyone (Carrot is a root vegetable, usually orange,
though purple, red, white, and yellow varieties exist. It has a crisp texture
when fresh.). With this exercise workshop leader shows students that is not so
easy to define simple term, and that they have hard job to do – do define some
abstract concept. (10-15 minutes)
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-
Workshop leader explains to students the whole procedure. Students are
given one concept, i.e. “FRIENDSHIP” and they must write definition for this
concept. Just one definition, at the most in two sentences. Then student have 5
minutes to write their definition. (10 minutes)
-
After students finish with the definition, the workshop leader will pick one of
the students. Workshop leader will write down her or his definition (flipchart,
word doc. on LCD projection, blackboard…) that everybody can see. Then the
other students become “Editor Board” and discus about this definition.
Workshop leader must be very skilful, and help children to find good and bad
parts of definition. After the discussion the students together with the leader
(Editorial board), discard (cross out) the parts of the definition that rejected
and leave the parts that are usable. Then whole process repeats with all the
definitions. If we have some new but very similar definition work shop leader
must conclude that this definition is good, but the similar one, and ask
Editorial board did we have something new in this definition. If we have
something new we can use that, if we don’t have, we go to next definition.
When you come to some definition you must ask students to raise their hand
who agree and who not agree with the definition. Then ask students who not
agree to explain why they don’t agree. Then ask students who agree (pick up
one) is other student have good argument. He must explain why this argument
is good or not good. These procedures you can repeat until you find definition
with 75 % agree. (50-60 minutes)
-
After the discussion of a whole definition, Editorial Board must create a short
and clear definition that will be part of the future dictionary.
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The aim of workshop is not find the perfect definition of Friendship, the main
aim is to think about friendship.
-
Throughout the debate on the definition of friendship, it is necessary to point
out all the positive and negative sides of friendship in order to better define
the friendship.
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This is a classical philosophical discussion about a given ethical issue.
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