Best Friends?
Unexpected friendships
by Hannah Taylor
Suitable for Key Stage 3
Aims
To consider the key elements of friendship and how we can build long-lasting friendships with others.
Preparation and materials
- You will need the PowerPoint slides that accompany this assembly (Best Friends?) and the means to display them.
Assembly
- Ask the students, ‘What is friendship?’
If possible, encourage the students to discuss the question, and then listen to a range of responses. - Explain that friendship is one of the most powerful things in the world. It involves spending time with someone we like, and who likes being with us. We can have friendships with pets, friendships at school, friendships with people we’ve known since we were babies and friendships with people we met recently.
- So, what makes a good friend? We could describe a good friend as someone who cares about us, listens to us and is kind and respectful towards us. It could be someone who is honest and tells us the truth; someone we can have a laugh with; or someone we can depend on who makes us feel happy.
- Remind the students that the best way to think about what makes a good friend is to think about how we would like to be treated.
Point out that sometimes, we can find friends in the unlikeliest of places. Friends might look different, and have very different personalities, but something joins us together. - Lots of novels feature unlikely friendships. The characters don’t mind that they are different; they don’t let that stop them being friends. Friendship is a very powerful thing.
- Show Slide 1.
In To Kill a Mockingbird, Jem and Scout end up making friends with Boo Radley, their mysterious neighbour, even though they thought of him as a kind of boogeyman in the beginning.
Show Slide 2.
In The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, set in Nazi Germany, a German boy called Bruno makes friends with a Jewish boy called Shmuel.
Show Slide 3.
In A Man Called Ove, the curmudgeonly Ove becomes friends with his neighbour, a chatty Iranian woman called Parvaneh, even though on the surface, they seem to have little in common. - Ask the students whether they can think of any other examples of unlikely friendships in film and literature.
If possible, encourage the students to discuss the question, and then listen to a range of responses.
Time for reflection
Remind the students that friendship is about showing kindness to others. Sometimes, when we do this, we can make the best friends ever. Our differences are what make us all special, so differences should never stop us making friends.
Ask the students, ‘How would our friends describe us?’
Pause to allow time for thought.
Ask the students, ‘How would we like to be described as a friend?’
Pause to allow time for thought.
Prayer
Dear Lord,
Thank you for our friends.
Thank you that they pick us up when we fall,
And listen when we are sad.
Please help us to be good friends to others.
Please help us to learn to listen well and to take the time to care.
Amen.
Song/music
‘Getting on with life’ by Philippa Hanna, available at: https://youtu.be/IOv5yhxJ1I0 (4.14 minutes long)
