F  R  I  E  N  D  S

To watch your class out at recess as compared to sitting in the classroom is such a different experience.  You watch the friendships evolve from the beginning of the school year.  Some stay the same, some change dramatically,  and some fluctuate every couple of weeks.  Those that fluctuate every couple of weeks cause some painful experiences among those members.  Those are your little cliques.  Where some weeks you are in the clique and all of a sudden you are out of the clique.  That is where the classroom Teacher needs to have some play acting (in the classroom) and have the class act out scenes portraying students doing this kind of action and showing ways it hurts people.  Then have the students work in groups to come up with different ways to make sure that this doesn't happen anymore.  Then work out a system that if it does continue to happen that the students that are responsible for it will have consequences to pay for it.  The students will also come up with those consequences.  They could be for example no recess the next day, extra homework, no classroom jobs, writing a letter to their parents telling them what they did, etc..