The Making Friends Program

Paddy C. Favazza, Michaelene M. Ostrosky, Chryso Mouzourou

• Publisher: Brookes Publishing
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781598579215
• eBook ISBN: 9781681250540
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

Bullying prevention starts with helping young children understand and accept diversity —the earlier the better. That's why your school team needs this ready-to-use resource, a simple, fun, and effective way to promote social acceptance in the critical early years of attitude development.

Perfect for K–2 classrooms, this book presents the field-tested, research-based Making Friends program, a toolbox of adaptable, practical strategies that fit right into your regular school day. You'll help students respect and accept each other's differences through three methods: 1) reading diversity-themed stories and conducting brief whole-class discussions; 2) forming small learning groups that encourage children from diverse backgrounds to play and interact; and 3) sharing the storybooks you read with families so they can continue discussions at home. Aligned with DEC/NAEYC recommended practices and the English Language Arts Common Core State Standards, this proven program will boost students' social and academic skills as you create a welcoming, inclusive, and culturally responsive classroom.

USE THIS PROGRAM TO

• enrich your existing classroom activities —circle time, class discussion, cooperative play—with important lessons on social acceptance
• strengthen students' literacy skills while they learn to accept and celebrate differences
• support friendships among children of diverse abilities, backgrounds, and family structures
• lay the groundwork for bully-free school environments
• choose books, toys, and other materials that reflect our diverse world and give young children a sense of belonging
• implement a universal design for learning (UDL) approach to address the needs of diverse learners
• "think on your feet" to work lessons on acceptance into small teachable moments and everyday conversations
• increase the home-school connection with strategies parents can use with their children
• strengthen understanding of how acceptance is developed through reflective activities for teachers and school-wide teams

PRACTICAL MATERIALS: The book includes a complete package of reproducible, adaptable materials for implementing the Making Friends program, including a sample activity schedule, discussion guides, and forms to send home with families. You'll also get step-by-step directions on working the activities into your school day, extensive lists of diversity resources, vignettes that model positive interactions, and more.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The Making Friends Program

TOOLBOX

Figure 1.1.	Hierarchy of social interactions
Table 1.1.	Common Core Standards
Table 1.2.	Anticipated benefits of the Making Friends program

Making Friends is a research-based program designed to promote greater acceptance of children with differences in early childhood classes (kindergarten to Grade 2). The strategies used in Making Friends align with the key components of attitude change research (Triandis, Adamopoulos, & Brinberg, 1984), which argues that “an attitude is an idea charged with emotion which predisposes a class of actions to a particular class of social situations” (Triandis, 1971, p. 2). Drawing on the early research on attitude change (Triandis et al., 1984), the Making Friends program utilizes home and school literacy and cooperative learning to support increased understanding and acceptance toward those with differences. Foundational information on attitudes and attitude change is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 2.

Along with the attitude change research, the Making Friends program also utilizes research on increasing the likelihood of social interactions through environmental arrangements and cooperative learning activities. Specifically, environmental arrangement strategies (e.g., selecting and rotating prosocial materials and activities, limiting materials and space; Odom & Bailey, 2001) are used in the context of cooperative learning (hands-on, small-group social activities; Beckman & Kohl, 1984; Johnson & Johnson, 1991, 1994) to support socialization among children.

Moreover, the Making Friends program is consistent with national and international responses to the increasing diversity reflected in our society (e.g., racial/ethnic, linguistic, ability, family structure) and the need for strategic efforts to support inclusion in early childhood classrooms (DEC/NAEYC, 2009; United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1990). Making Friends was developed to ensure that all children in early childhood classrooms are accepted as full members of the inclusive classroom community.

BACKGROUND RESEARCH

The children with special needs seem a lot more comfortable … it looks to me like they feel like a part of the group now.
— Mr. Peter

In response to the growing diversity represented in early childhood classrooms (National Center for Education Statistics, 2014), federal funding pertaining to inclusion was provided to support the underlying research of the Making Friends program. The Making Friends program is based on the field-testing of Special Friends, a program designed to promote understanding and acceptance of young children with disabilities. The initial research (Favazza, LaRoe, & Odom, 1999; Favazza & Odom, 1997) in general early childhood classrooms showed the following:

• Most early childhood classes do not have sufficient support (e.g., information, materials, curricula) to foster accepting environments.
• Kindergartners who participated in the Special Friends program when implemented with small groups had significantly greater levels of acceptance of children with disabilities when compared to children who did not participate in the program.

A more recent study of Special Friends (Ostrosky & Favazza, 2008) examined this program as a classwide intervention in inclusive kindergarten classrooms. Because all participating classes were inclusive (as compared to previous studies, in which children with disabilities were brought into general education classrooms for intervention sessions), these classroom environments were examined to determine if supports were in place to create accepting environments (e.g., materials, information, curricula). In addition, the impact of the program on children’s social skills, friendships, and acceptance of children with disabilities was examined following program implementation in kindergarten and again in the first and second grades. The program was field-tested across 4 years with 662 children from 32 kindergarten classes (16 in the Northeast, 16 in the Midwest) in a randomized control study designed to examine the efficacy of the program (16 contact control classes and 16 Special Friends classes). Research questions included the following:

1. Does participation in the program yield positive attitudes toward children with disabilities?
2. Are gains in positive attitudes maintained over time after the program ends?
3. Does participation in the classwide program yield increased social skills?

The findings were as follows:

• Preprogram sociometric ratings indicated that typically developing children were less likely to play with classmates with disabilities versus classmates without disabilities.
• Preprogram scores on a global measure of attitudes indicated that children with disabilities are generally not accepted by typically developing peers.
• Without intervention or intentional programming, typically developing children demonstrated increasingly negative attitudes toward children with disabilities compared to children who participated in a program designed to support acceptance of differences.
• Compared to children in control groups, children who participated in the program showed greater levels of acceptance on postprogram assessment of attitudes across 3 years. Moreover, when children’s baseline (preprogram) assessment scores were taken into account, the benefits of being in the Special Friends program (e.g., sustained positive attitudes toward children with disabilities) were still evident and appeared to be accentuated 2 years after the program when compared to children who did not participate in the program. Taken together, these findings suggest that participation in Special Friends played a role in preventing children’s attitudes toward individuals with disabilities from worsening over time.
• Teachers reported that children who participated in the Special Friends program demonstrated significant improvements in the areas of cooperation, assertiveness, responsibility, engagement, communication, and self-control.
• Parents and teachers reported that children’s attitudes and behaviors toward peers with disabilities changed positively as a result of participation in the program, emphasizing that the program promoted greater knowledge and understanding about and acceptance of children with differing abilities.

Maria increased her knowledge about how everyone is different and it’s okay.
—Mr. Gutierrez

This underlying research for the Making Friends program has relevance for all children in the current school landscape. In today’s classrooms, it is more common to have a diverse group of children, such as children with disabilities, children who speak multiple languages, children who represent different races and ethnicities, and children from diverse family structures (Center for Public Education, 2012; Cox-Petersen, 2011; National Center for Education Statistics, 2014). However, as this research demonstrates, the increasing presence of diversity in classrooms does not lead to automatic acceptance. In fact, as diversity has increased in schools, so have bullying behaviors. In a noteworthy meta-analysis of 153 studies focused on bullying, researchers found that attitudes and beliefs toward those with differences, formation of social competence, early experiences of social isolation, and school climate all play a role in the development of bullying behavior (Cook, Williams, Guerra, Kim, & Sadek, 2010). Taken together, the research on bullying and the research on Special Friends point to the need for programs like this to play a preventative role during the early years by combating social isolation and negative perceptions and attitudes while simultaneously bolstering social competence and a sense of belonging in accepting class environments.

PHILOSOPHY

We learned about sharing.
— Alyssa, 6 years old

At the heart of the Making Friends program is the philosophy that all children belong; all children have a place in early childhood and elementary classes that celebrate differences while remembering that even in the presence of human differences, all children are more alike than different. Differences in race/ethnicity, ability level, language use, and family structure are a wonderful reflection of our increasingly diverse society, and as more diversity is represented in early childhood classrooms and schools, it is essential to implement research-based programs like Making Friends to intentionally foster acceptance of all children.

The idea of promoting acceptance of human differences and creating inclusive classrooms in an increasingly diverse society is not new. Indeed, in the United States, there is a long history of legislative attempts to form a more inclusive society in response to pervasive attitudes of nonacceptance of differences in others. For example, two notable legislative efforts related to the inclusion of individuals with differences were the Civil Rights Act (PL 88-352; 1964) and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA; PL 94-142; 1997), formerly called the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (PL 94-142). The 1964 Civil Rights Act was one of the first and most comprehensive pieces of legislation to address discrimination in educational settings for people of color. It took years for it to be fully implemented and another decade before similar efforts were made on behalf of individuals with disabilities. However, many would argue that the country still has a long way to go to fully realize this legislation for both children of color and children with disabilities.

More recently, in response to the growing number of children who are dual language learners, each state in the United States has developed policies to protect the rights and meet the needs of children who use multiple languages— children who are often from diverse cultures and ethnicities (Nemeth, 2012). Likewise, a notable change in the composition of contemporary family structures can be seen in educational and community settings. For example, over the past several decades, there has been an increase in single-parent homes, same-sex parenting, and families with adopted and/or foster children (Cox-Petersen, 2011). And whereas the diversity in early childhood classrooms has blossomed, teachers may be unprepared to work with children from diverse family structures or implement programs that address concerns of social isolation, nonacceptance of others, or bullying (Kissen, 2002). In fact, there are no federal laws solely dedicated to bullying; rather, the issue is addressed within many pieces of legislation that were designed to protect the rights of individuals with regard to race, national origin, color, sex, age, disability, and religion, such as Titles IV and VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of the US Education Amendments (PL 92-318; 1972), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act (PL 93-112; 1973), and IDEA (Cox-Petersen, 2011).

In addition to legislative responses to the needs of diverse populations, several national and international organizations have spoken with a singular voice about the critical need to create caring, inclusive environments for children. For example, the position statements from the Division for Early Childhood of the Council for Exceptional Children and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (DEC/ NAEYC, 2009) recommend that schools utilize evidence-based strategies to address the social and emotional needs of children by fostering a sense of belonging for all children. Fostering inclusive early childhood classes that promote a sense of belonging and acceptance of differences mirrors the sentiments of the DEC/NAEYC Joint Position Statement on Inclusion, which states, “Promoting development and belonging for every child is a widely held value among early education and intervention professionals and throughout our society. Early childhood inclusion is the term used to reflect these values and societal views” (DEC/NAEYC, 2009).

Rylee learned that all children are the same.
— Ms. Hannon

At the international level, the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child (1990) and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006) affirmed the rights of all children to live in accepting home, school, and community settings with dignity and respect for, and celebration of, their unique human differences. Both of these conventions resonate with efforts to understand and include people with different racial/ethnic backgrounds, languages, abilities, and family structures as research continues to document the numerous benefits of inclusion. These benefits include increased independence, enhanced educational outcomes and social interaction, social skill acquisition, the development of friendships, and the promotion of positive attitudes toward one another (Aboud, Mendelson, & Purdy, 2003; Fuchs & Fuchs, 1994; Hunter & Elias, 1999; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2000; Sailor, Gee, & Karasoff, 1993; Santos, Cheatham, & Duran, 2012; Waldron & McLeskey, 1998). However, even with these legislative efforts, position statements, and international conventions, social inclusion and acceptance of others does not automatically occur when children from diverse backgroun...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Forms
• About the Authors
• About the Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Introduction: The Making Friends Program
• Chapter 2 Attitudes
• Chapter 3 Reflective Exercises
• Chapter 4 Setting Up the Making Friends Program
• Chapter 5 Resources for the School and Home Environments
• References
• Index