A Class Meeting with Kids that Builds Important Social and Emotional Skills

A classroom teacher explains her experience running a weekly class meeting, including tips, tricks, and advice for improving the classroom routines to create a positive atmosphere.

Your Class Meeting: Make it Effective EVERY Day

In this post, I will be sharing how-to run effective classroom meetings with a schedule and specific plans to help children learn and apply interpersonal skills for their social-emotional well being. My hope is that you will be able to implement these strategies to start your own classroom meetings or improve your routines and outcomes.

Why Have a Class Meeting?

I am a strong advocate for social responsibility being taught and reinforced at school. Class meetings allow you to teach things that are not be written in your Math, Reading, or Science curriculum but are equally important and deserve your time.

Children will learn how to express feelings and emotions in constructive ways. They will learn to deal with anger issues and how to calm oneself down. In addition, they will build the skills needed to independently solve problems. Also, they will learn how to make and maintain healthy friendships through listening, expressing themselves, taking turns, and playing games. Most importantly, effective classroom meetings mean there are opportunities to connect as a class and share and learn from each other. Through sharing our good and bad feelings, we can relate to each other. We can share what we are thankful for, give compliments, and solve problems together. Classroom meetings allow us to grow as a group and individually.

Having taught class meetings in primary classrooms over the years, I have seen great results. I have seen children learn to cope and handle difficult situations with ease. In additions, I have witnessed children go from needing a lot of help to deal with anger and issues with friends, to being completely 100% independent in doing so. Therefore, I hope that you will see similar results.

The Class Meeting Schedule

Classroom meetings can take place at any point during the day and for as long as you see necessary. I prefer to have our meetings on Fridays in the afternoon. That is the day and time that we are finishing up work and decompressing from the week. Children have just completed a full week of activities and playing with friends. They often have plenty to talk about and share. Our meetings usually last around 30 minutes to 1 hour depending on the lesson and need for talk time.

Opening the Class Meeting

We start every class meeting sitting together in a circle at the carpet. I like to set an intention for the meeting to get children focused and ready to listen. We use our chime and some deep quiet breathing to clear our heads and calm our bodies.

I review a few rules about respectful listening (looking at the speaker, listening to what they are saying, having a calm body). We remind ourselves that the only person allowed to talk is the person with the “talking stick” or any item that you have chosen for children to hold when it’s their turn to speak. We wait for everyone to look and sound ready and we begin.

We take turns going around the circle and passing our “talking stick” or another item. We take turns giving our temperature out of 10 to express how we are feeling at the time (0 being not good and 10 being great). Children can say their temperature and give a reason if they wish. For example, I am an 8 because I played a fun game of soccer with my friends at lunch. As we go around the circle, if children are not ready for their turn, they can have a pass and we will come back to them.

During our very first meeting, we spend a lot of time learning about the scale of 0 to 10. I encourage children to think about their feelings on this scale and how even if they are having a bad day, they are probably are not a zero. This requires practice and help. I give examples along the scale to illustrate this for them. Having a small chart with the scale on a number line with some examples is helpful.

Gratitude (Giving Thanks during the Class Meeting)

This is another variation to include instead of temperatures during meetings. Take turns going around the circle and expressing gratitude for something. It can be absolutely anything. We use the words “I am thankful for…” when the talking stick comes to us. For example, I am thankful for the nice weather outside or I am thankful for my mom because she takes good care of me.

Again giving gratitude is something we spend time learning about initially. We share all the things we are thankful for and brainstorm them on a chart for ideas in the future. I encourage children to be authentic and to think with their hearts when it is their turn. Some children prefer to use an idea from the chart or an idea they have heard from a friend, which is fine as well.

Bouquets (Giving Compliments during the Class Meeting)

I teach children that a bouquet of flowers is something you give someone you care about to say something special. Giving each other compliments and saying nice things is like giving a friend a bouquet of flowers. This helps children to visualize the importance of saying nice things. We discuss how it makes them feel when someone says nice things to them and we brainstorm ideas during our first meetings. We talk about the difference between a “surface” compliment (I like your haircut!) and a “deeper” compliment (You are a kind friend!). We agree that deeper compliments, the ones that are about our character and who we are, are more meaningful and require more thought.

Children put up their hands for a turn to give a bouquet to a friend in the circle. We practice and I support them to use the line “I have a bouquet for… because…” These are very powerful! Often as children give their bouquets, more hands go up as others remember things they want to express to their peers and appreciate. Not everyone has to give a bouquet during a meeting, just those that want to.

Beefs (Using the Class Meeting for Problem Solving)

It is important for children to learn problem-solving strategies that they can eventually learn and use independently. During the “beefs” portion of effective classroom meetings we talk about and learn problem-solving strategies. There requires teaching ahead of time about the different ways to solve a problem.

Teach students that when a problem occurs they can do a few different things:

Tell the person to “STOP”
Say how it makes them feel “It makes me feel… when you…!”
Suggest a solution to the problem
Walk away and leave the situation
Get help from an adult you know

There needs to be a few rules set during this time to avoid intentionally hurting feelings. Limiting the number of “beefs” expressed during a meeting to 3 or 4 is helpful. I also have a rule against naming the names of friends in our classroom or school that the problem is with to maintain and show respect. As adults, we wouldn’t want to be “called out” for our mistakes in front of our peers and therefore we wouldn’t want our students doing that to each other either.

If a child has a problem and has a hard time solving it on their own, they are encouraged to share it with the class. They are asked to explain what the problem is and then take 4 suggestions from the class on ways to solve. Their problems usually consist of issues with cooperation, sharing, taking turns, and unfortunately bullying and negative physical contact.

An example of a typical problem, At lunch I wanted a turn on the swings but nobody would let me. Examples of typical solutions, you can ask nicely and say “May I please have a turn?” or find something else to do on the playground instead. I allow the class to give their suggestions first and then I give my own thoughts, usually to reinforce what has been said already. Sometimes children are not sure what problems they should be solving on their own and which require adult help (bullying and any negative contact). This is a great opportunity to teach this.

This is the culminating part of an effective classroom meeting. This part can take on any shape or form depending on what you want to teach your class or what your needs are. You may want to see how the week goes and see if there are any issues that stand out and need to be addressed. Or decide to have a short discussion with your class after a book about the topic. You could have a discussion and have students write and draw about what you discussed. In addition, you might choose to have your students role-play different scenarios and discuss their feelings. Finally, you may choose to do a separate lesson and activity to help build a certain social-emotional learning area.

Your school or district may have a specific social responsibility or SEL program that they like to use that has lessons for you to pick from. There are usually opportunities to attend conferences and workshops to learn different approaches available to teachers. The Social Emotional Learning Curriculum mind+heart is a comprehensive program perfect for K-2 and includes 8 units filled with lessons and activities to add a ton of value to your class meetings. Some of the other programs I have used in my classroom and am especially fond of are Roots of Empathy, Mind-Up, Tribes, and Restitution.

Topics for lessons

During each week, I have AT LEAST one meeting and a lesson on a specific social and emotional learning topic. Some of these ideas are listed below.

Self-regulation (expressing emotions appropriately, calming down, self-control)
Friendship skills (taking turns, sharing, listening)
Empathy (caring about others, thinking of others before ourselves, helping others)
Bullying (how to stop it, how to recognize it)
Conflict resolution (problem-solving skills)
Respect (recognizing differences, appreciation, acceptance, kindness, love)
Cooperation and responsibility (for oneself, with others, in the classroom and school)
Basic needs (versus wants)

Find everything you need for an entire year of class meetings in the mind+heart SEL curriculum. Available for K-2 and 3-5.

mind+heart K-2 SEL curriculum

mind+heart 3-5 SEL curriculum

Class Meeting Must-Have Book List

Books can be a very powerful tool in expressing what is sometimes difficult to explain. They provide another perspective and example of what is discussed. I like to keep a box of special books that I save for classroom meetings. I pull the books out to share with the class to support our discussions during meetings. The following list of books are highly recommended. I own each book and have read it to children over the years with success.

class meeting social emotional learning picture book list

How to Be a Friend: A Guide to Making Friends and Keeping Them by Brown
Two by Otoshi
The Name Jar by Choi
My Mouth is a Volcano by Cook
Bad Case of the Tattle Tongue by Cook
Interrupting Chicken by Stein
The Juice Box Bully by Sornson
Stop Picking on Me by Thomas
Spaghetti in a Hot Dog Bun by Dismondy
Enemy Pie by Munson
The Recess Queen by O’Neil
You’re Mean, Lily Jean by Wishinsky
How Full is Your Bucket? For Kids by Rath
Chrysanthemum by Henkes
The Way I Feel by Cain
The Way I Act by Metzger
How Are You Peeling? by Freymann

Community Building Activity

As a final quick activity, I like to do something fun as a class. We usually play a game or complete a teamwork activity. I start the year by teaching the class a few games and activities that we can use throughout the year. We use the community building activities for kids weekly to help us stay connected and having fun together!

Classroom and Morning Meeting Resources

Free Week of Morning Meeting

Try social-emotional morning meetings in your classroom with this FREE week-long resource! It includes editable PowerPoint and PDF slides, printable cards, and instructions on how to use. Click the image below to grab a copy.

FREE Class Meeting Planner

To support your effective classroom meetings, I have created a template for you to print and use to plan and prepare your meetings. The schedule template includes a brief description of each part and includes an area for notes and specific plans. I hope you find it useful. Click the image below!

mind+heart SEL Morning Meeting Bundle

Transform your classroom with a daily 15 minute morning meeting. Get everything you need for a daily meeting in this HUGE bundle. Check out this year-long morning meeting resource today!