Goofus and Gallant® Lesson Plan
The following lesson plan uses the Goofus and Gallant characters from Highlights for Children magazine and teaches you how to incorporate them into your everyday classroom activities.
SOCIAL SKILLS
Objective: Develop a sense of caring about others
DRAMA
Objective: Improvise what happened before and after
LANGUAGE ARTS -- WRITING
Objective: Create an original with feature as model
These ideas are organized to meet specific objectives within designated curriculum areas that are shown above.
- Brainstorm with the class what the situations might be in which the contrasting Goofus/Gallant behaviors arise. Note them on the board. The feature itself gives a lot of clues. Students just need to flesh it out first, with what might have happened to lead up to the actual moments shown in the magazine. Then they need to follow through with a logical consequence of the actual moments shown.
- When you have plenty of ideas about possible situations, have volunteers act out one of them with a Goofus. Have another set of volunteers act out a situation with Gallant. Each little scene should, of course, include the actual moments illustrated in the magazine.
- Form smaller groups and have the students repeat the activity described in #2. The groups can use ideas from the brainstorming or create their own. Let them choose whether they want to do a Goofus scene, a Gallant scene, or both.
- Have groups share some of the improvisations with the whole class.
- Repeat the activity (perhaps on other days) until everyone has had a chance to be either Goofus or Gallant, or preferably both. If groups, by now, are inventing their own situations and issues, that's fine.
- Once everyone has had a turn at being a main character (and the groups are getting good at following through with the reactions of friends, and so on), discuss how it feels to be Goofus and how it feels to be Gallant.
- Have students make up a Goofus/Gallant situation with a family member. They can talk about this with the family member, write it down, illustrate it, act it out, or all of these.
- Have students tell the class about these creations.
- You may want to put together a class book with the new situations. As the weeks go by, various other situations will arise in which you can discuss how Goofus and Gallant would each respond. Add to the book.
For a sample of the Goofus and Gallant section click here.