Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun

In our 2nd Grade social skills classes we have been talking about friendship and how we can solve our friendship problems. I started today's lesson with having students get into small groups asking them some friendship questions:

1. Has someone ever been unkind to you? What happened?
2. How have you solved a friendship problem with someone on your own?
3. Have you ever helped someone out that was not nice to you?

After our small group discussions we listened to Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun by Maria Dismondy. You can check out her website at http://www.mariadismondy.com/. She has great books on teaching how to accept people and empower students when they deal with tough situations. When our story was done we had a group conversation about how the other students treated the characters in the book. Students really grasped the concept of "if you want others to be nice to you then you should be nice to them".