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This article outlines some general ideas for implementing classroom meetings school wide or just within your class. It describes these meetings as "an opportunity to observe the practice of dignity, respect, and understanding" as well as one to combat bullying. Emphasizing the importance of meeting facilitator training, the article walks through both beneficial training steps and implementation strategies.

This is a good, in-depth read about how to effectively run classroom meetings in your own class. It talks about what classroom meetings promote amongst your students, some objectives you can address, ways to deal with challenging situations, and how to set it up for different age groups, and some questions you can use to start communication. If you're interested in implementing classroom meetings in your next practicum (or later on as a teacher), this document will give you everything you need to get started.

This is a link to a restorative justice lesson plan. The lesson plan focuses on teaching students how to develop restorative consequences as a group. In order to do this, students participate in a classroom meeting/restorative justice circle. Students learn about coming to a consensus, how to come up with consequences for offenders, and why offenders commit crimes As a result of this lesson, students will learn how restorative justice can help offenders to stop their negative behaviours and how this can be incorporated into a classroom setting.

Beth Lewis outlines her ideas around class meetings and community circles. Practical, useful and definitely applicable to multiple grade levels. Try it out if you want to work on character development or building community in your classroom.

This lesson plan comes from two educators in Alberta. In the lesson students learn about the concept of justice circles through role play. This helps students to learn respect for others in the classroom. Justice circles are similar to the classroom meetings in the previous post, however, justice circles are more focused on allowing the victims and offenders to get a better sense of one another. The goal is to resolve conflict while remaining respectful to all involved. In this lesson plan students role play different situations in a justice circle. Additionally students also write about one participant and what his or her involvement was in the justice circle. They then have to reflect on the process and why it was or wasn't effective. This lesson will help students understand how restorative justice can provide a support system for both victim and offender and how that is different from retributive justice.

Part 4 of this free online resourse dealves deeper into the need for students to feel empowered and using praise and encouragement to help meet this need and in turn prevent classroom management issues. It offers specific strategies to improve praise including how to structure it and when it is appropriate.

I came across this incredible free resource online. It is a mini-course about classroom management that takes a "needs focused" approach to prevent classroom managment issues and to deal with them effectively when/if they do arise. Part one focuses on the need of students to "belong" and contains strategies to build a "classroom community" including student meetings and team building activities.