Class meetings begin with "Compliments and Appreciations". We pass around a stuffed bear and each child gets to express a compliment or appreciation to another member of the class. Most of the time the children give compliments regarding appearance like "I like your shirt, Chris." or "I like your hair in braids, Rachel." As the year has progressed sometimes the children state appreciations where they state that they appreciate what someone has done, such as "I was glad you played with me at recess yesterday, Katie." or "I appreciate you helping me pick up my school box when it spilled, Bryce." This has a positive effect on the class, since it causes the kids to look for the good in one another.
The next component of class meetings is our agenda. This is the time when we discuss any problems in our classroom, brainstorm solutions, and vote on a solution to try. Problems have to be placed on the agenda prior to the meeting. Before I tried class meetings, I thought that the kids wouldn't remember what had happened the day before to discuss, but I was really wrong on that!!! If it is important, they remember. Also, discussing problems the next day allows the children to be less emotional about what happened and more objective. We have solved problems such as playing in the bathroom by decided to make posters to hang in the bathroom to remind people not to play, forgetting to rewind tapes by showing everyone what a rewound tape looks like and by making small reminders by each tape recorder, and helping the children to follow class rules by holding up the rule number that a friend is breaking to remind them what they are supposed to do. Sometimes when there is no problem on the agenda we have a mini lesson on a social issue such as name calling or we role play situations that have been problems recently.
The last part of our meeting is the announcements part. We go over our schedule so that everyone will know what to expect during the day and the order activities will occur. I have found this to be very helpful to the class. This way I am not constantly answering questions about when is lunch or recess. The kids learn quickly what we will do during the day. Also, I find that when I announce the "focus" of our alphabet paper lesson, early in the day, the kids have until then for their minds to be thinking about words they could contribute during the lesson. I also announce who the leader for the day is.
It is important to set a timer for the meeting and only spend 8 to 10 minutes daily on it. I set the timer for 8 minutes and stop the agenda portion when the timer goes off. If we are not finished, we continue the next day. The final 2 minutes are used for the announcements part.
This has been the first year I have used this class meeting idea and I really like it. I hear the children being much more complimentary to each other throughout the day and find them trying to solve problems among themselves before they go onto the class agenda.
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