Help students think through everyday friendship challenges and practice choosing respectful, calm responses. This friendship skills resource is designed for grades 4–6 and pairs a teacher-led lesson with an interactive “Popcorn Drama” slide activity and a printable response worksheet.

What’s Included

• A lesson plan with discussion prompts about friendship, common friendship drama, and positive ways to treat friends.
• An interactive PowerPoint slideshow presenting friendship scenarios and response choices.
• A printable worksheet where students rewrite friendship behaviors as drama-free alternatives.

How to Use It

Begin with a conversation about qualities students value in friends and examples of behaviors that can cause conflict. Then display the interactive activity on a board. Students consider scenarios such as a friend not replying to a text, an upsetting joke, a shared secret, or a disagreement about what movie to watch, and identify constructive responses. Discuss the choices together afterward. The lesson plan suggests assessing learning by having students rewrite “drama” behaviors as “no drama” behaviors.

Use the lesson for a whole-class friendship discussion or adapt the prompts for a small-group or school counseling session. The worksheet provides a written follow-up for practicing the same idea, including responding differently to distrust, overreacting to a small problem, and frustration when a friend does not answer.

Skills Practiced

• Recognizing helpful and unhelpful friendship behaviors
• Communicating concerns respectfully
• Responding calmly to everyday frustrations
• Keeping a friend’s private information confidential
• Finding cooperative solutions to disagreements

The lesson plan calls for a board and marker for discussion and use of the interactive activity. The slideshow is intended for display; the worksheet can be printed for students to complete. The included materials are in English.