Recognizing a Supportive Community

Session One

Present role-plays.

• Explain that a group of older students will role-play three situations to help the class learn more about what makes a community. As they watch each situation, encourage students to look for the people, places, things and activities that are present. Without much comment, ask the intermediate students to perform the three scenarios for about 30 seconds each.

Discuss role-plays.

• Ask students to comment on what was similar and different about the three situations in the role-plays. Begin with people and ask students to identify who was involved in each situation. Proceed with the three other features of a community. Record students' comments on the chalkboard to create a chart, such as the one below. Guide students to understand that the people, place and things did not change, but the activities did.

Introduce kinds of interactions.

• Ask students to explain, in their own words, the differences between the activities in the three situations. Draw out the following ideas. (The exact terminology is not essential.)
  • No interaction: In the first situation, students did not have anything to do with each other–they did not interact with each other; they did not bother each other or be nice to each other.
  • Positive interaction: In the second situation, students had a lot to do with each other–they interacted with each other; they were nice to each other; they did not bother each other.
  • Negative interaction: In the third situation, students had a lot to do with each other–they interacted with each other; they did not help each other; they only bothered each other.

Practise role-playing.

• Ask every student to take out a book. Explain that you want them to model what it looks like when students interact with each other in three different ways, just as the older students demonstrated earlier.
  • Ask everyone to read his or her book without any interaction. Coach students so that they do not look at or smile at each other.
  • After a brief while, ask everyone to read his or her book while interacting positively with the students around them. Coach students on what this would look like; e.g., sharing ideas, pointing to each others' books, reading to each other, asking questions.
  • Finally ask students–either the entire class or one table at a time–to show, without hitting, shoving or throwing, what it would look like to interact negatively with the students around them; e.g., making noise so others cannot read, criticizing their books, putting a hand over the page.

  Discuss how students felt in each situation. Ask students to indicate which situation is the best situation if everyone is to learn and feel good about themselves and about other students. Suggest that when people are a supportive community, they interact in positive ways to help each other meet their needs. Identify contexts where interaction may not be supportive; e.g., during silent reading, times when students need or prefer to work independently.