Rank It!. What Would a Good Friend Do?. Teaching Notes

Rank It!

Below are some different qualities people think are important for their friends to have. Rank them in order of importance for you, giving reasons and examples for your choices.

_____ honesty _____ courage

_____ popularity _____ responsibility

_____ wisdom _____ reliability

_____ sense of humour _____ creativity

_____ common sense _____ beauty

What Would a Good Friend Do?

In the situations below, discuss what a good friend would do when confronted with this problem.

1) Your friend suffers from very bad body odour, and seems unaware of the problem.

2) Your friend wants to borrow money from you, but you know that they will be spending the money on drugs.

3) You know that your friend’s partner has been having an affair with their boss.

4) Your friend has just won the lottery, great news, but their attitude has changed a lot – they are now very arrogant and always bragging about their wealth.

5) Your friend has found a new religion. You disagree with nearly everything they now believe in.

6) Your friend constantly calls you for advice and help, though is unavailable when you need the same in return.

7) In an argument with a friend you said something that really upset them, and now they refuse to answer your calls.

8) Your friend is getting married, but you have a bad feeling about their future spouse.

9) Your friend’s partner keeps hitting on you.

10) You love seeing your friend – but not their child, who is always rude and demanding when you get together.

Teaching Notes

This is a useful topic for nearly every level - everyone has experience and opinions about it. With higher level students you could encourage a more philosophical discussion about the meaning of friendship. Depending on the level of discussion the class should take 1 ½ to two hours.

Quotes

Depending on the size and ability of the class you could do this as a class discussion or break the class into smaller groups. If it’s a lower level class you would have to pre-teach vocabulary before breaking them into groups. It’s good to encourage students to first analyse the meaning of the quote, and then say whether they agree with it or not, and it’s a great opportunity to share different stories and experiences of friendship.

Story Retelling

It’s important to control the time with this one, otherwise students will ramble on with very convoluted stories to their partner. Maybe give the class a couple of minutes quiet thinking time before they share their stories, and then limit pair discussion to five minutes for each student’s story. You’ll also need to remind students that all stories should be told using the past tense.

When the students are presenting each other’s stories to the class, make sure the rest of the class is listening by requesting that they ask questions about the story after.

Rank It!

Break students into pairs or small groups. Make sure you emphasise it’s the discussion and the process that is important here, not just ranking the ten qualities. For example, ask them to consider each quality from both sides – why would it be nice to have a popular friend/ what would be difficult about having an unpopular friend.

After about ten minutes, bring the class back together to compare opinions – some groups might have some very different ideas, seeing the differences between what is important to different nationalities, ages, or genders could provoke some interesting discussion.

What Would A Good Friend Do?

There are a few different ways you could use this.

1) Have all students discuss all situations in groups, and compare answers.

2) Assign pairs or groups of students two or three problems and then they report their ideas back to the class, the class can then discuss whether they think it’s a reasonable solution.

3) For each situation students could discuss what a good friend would do, and also what a bad friend would do.

4) Students can role play the confrontation between the friends in each situation.

Have fun!

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