Friendship Circle

Friendship Circle – Session to understand issues with friends and help to enjoy being with friends in class.

Preparation versus Practicality:

Welcome activity:

Planned was movement game, fire in the mountain run run run but the sound was too much, could not set instructions for the game

In Session:

• Preparation for stimulating children about case handling was planned to inform the previous day which was not done as planned. so we needed time for preparing children to understand we can solve our own problems

• Planned was to sit in smaller groups and conduct panchayat on cases and take every group opinion on cases and finally judges decide what to do. It was havoc where the audience was not relating to solving the issue, few were having fun, making noise, few were trying to understand, few were unaware of what to do

• We planned to make a group of people who were not interested in.

• Complaining form with the format was made but children had left the file at home.

• Reflection planned to write on chit but ended with thumbs up and down which were a repeat.

SESSION:

We did Guided Visualisation to stimulate what type of issues they face in school with friends, could be fighting, teasing or just like that. The format of the complaint form was written on the board. Initially many did not have any issues, as they saw writing about issues, many joined to write more.
It took some time to write and collect all the issues.

We made categories of issues like teasing, hitting and others.
We tried calling out both and judges to handle the case. Children sharing the concern were feeling shy to express.
Judges were not stimulated to prepared on how to solve the problem both teasing each other. They needed time to ponder, but a lot of noise by few was deviating the interested ones. They could not get to think about what to think or suggest for many.

We questioned why will one tease others, why will one trouble others? what are the possible reasons? what makes them tease? what feeling would make them tease? What else we can do to express?

Very few could connect and suggest while others were busy with talk and restlessness. They shared they could ignore, take the help of parents or teachers or a friend who knows both.

There occurs a real incident on the spot where bubblegum was stuck to one of the child’s clothes and he was upset. We called up a new case, we did roleplay about what could be the possible reason and children were suddenly connecting to it. We also expressed while enacting that we can talk to each other, express feeling and understand by sharing each other’s needs and we can express sorry for mistakes and sort out issues by self through roleplay.

Reflection: thumbs up to like to solve our own issues and thumbs down to not solve our own issues

What went well

• Claps for silence was understood

• Silence and Pongal time helps, were used and children could connect

• The inner circle and outer circle formation are easily understandable

• Guided Visualization helped them to connect with the issue and write their complaints and also on Reflection to stimulate to think that we can solve our own problems.

• Instant case of bubblegum was taken and enacted which was easily connected.

• Role Play format was easily understood and connected by children.

• Children connected to fights and we’re able to put in papers.

• Few children were able to connect and give suggestions for alternate ways to solve fights.

What did not go well

• Bringing them to silence for case writing, getting the suggestion, make them think about an alternate response, lead them to discuss were little not in the flow of preparation.

• The sound was a little high, and as conductors got little disturbed and were diverted to reduce voice rather than focus on session variations.

• Self-thinking time leads to a lot of distraction

• Few children we’re all time disturbing the session

• Each one talks for others, rather than self need was the pattern observed.

• Friendship team had only Gyan to fighters, and we’re not able to think beyond or different solutions.

• Paper distribution was chaos, small and big creates confusion

• The welcome code setting for fire in the mountain was not set.

• Language translation was havoc, few needed Tamil, few kànnad or Telugu

• We could not get individual suggestions for alternate ways to express anger.