Last week I wrote a post about routines families follow that help
children stay organized during the school year.
It led me to think about another routine some families and classrooms
follow, the family or classroom meeting.
Jane Nelson, Ed.D. shares her ideas about the benefits of a family
meeting in Positive Discipline,
her classic guide for families. “One
way to help children and parents learn effective communication is to have
regular family meetings where they have an opportunity on a weekly basis to
brainstorm for solutions to problems and to choose the solutions that are
respectful to everyone.”
When Stacey, my Let’s Choose co-founder, and
I worked together in a classroom we included “meeting
time”
twice a day. We were working in
a self-contained classroom for children with various learning issues but all
struggled with aspects of language. For
us meetings were a great time to work on social and behavior skills. That was where the ideas behind our
Choice-A-Quence game originated.
1. We
wanted to take time to help the students learn the vocabulary of behavior and
social skills.
2. Another
goal was to grow a shared language around social skills and behavior.
3. Lastly,
we wanted the children to develop an awareness that they are making choices
with every action they take; making eye contact, having a sharpened pencil
ready at the start of work time or eating an apple. Every action we do or don’t
do is a choice that is followed by a consequence.
To build that awareness in our meetings we created simple line
drawings of
choices the students might make in our classroom both positive and
negative, and consequences that could follow.
Everyday we would
play with the cards -
*A game show making pairs
of possible choice and consequence pairs,
*Drawing and writing
about choices and their consequences, and
*Role-playing were
classroom favorites.
The children learned the vocabulary and made connections about what
could happen in a hypothetical non-threatening way.
Stacey and I were pleased at how consistent we were using the language
from our cards to talk about real behaviors that were happening in class. By October children were learning to play
with the cards and use them to talk about real choices.
With my family we have a meeting a few times each year to coordinate
our calendars a few times a year. We
make sure to plan what we want to happen and leave free time so we are not too
busy. A family with 3 older boys has a
weekly meeting to share books they are reading and ideas of what they might be
interested in doing when they grow up.
They have a strong entrepreneurial spirit.
How would your family use meeting time?
