Wheel of Choice

In our classroom we have a lot of tattling...and I mean A LOT!!! We do Class Meetings daily. One of the parts of class meetings is to create a Wheel of Choice. This is a wheel that the kids can go to when they have a problem and choose a solution to help them with their problem. This has come in really handy when my kids are arguing with a friend or someone stole their pencil.

It took us a couple days to come up with the solutions but it was all the kids ideas which I think is what's best!

We spent one class meeting (about 20 minutes) brainstorming some solutions. I gave them some examples which were straight out of the book Positive Discipline. Which, if you have not read it, you are a teacher, and wanting to implement Class Meetings, I highly recommend it!

  

The kids came up with most of the solutions and I charted them on the board. We then did a class vote. I have all the kids put their heads down so there is no peer pressure. They raise their hands on the ones they want and the ones with most votes were put on our final wheel of choice. 

Here is our brainstorming process 

Then I went home and made a visual for them. This hangs in the back of our classroom, but in an easily accessible area. Now whenever the kids come up to me saying "Ms. Buchtien, she looked at me funny." I simply reply with "Please go look at the Wheel of Choice".

Of course this doesn't always work and I do still have to run interference on some problems. But this has reduced the amount of problems by a lot. Usually when a kid comes up to me now with a problem they say something along the lines of "I tried using ________________ on the wheel of choice but it isn't working".

I love class meetings, they are probably my favorite part of the day. We open each meeting up with a color that relates to how we are feeling today (yellow-happy, blue-sad, red-angry, and so on). We then usually talk about a problem we are having. When the kids have a problem they put it on our Agenda and then we talk about it in a meeting. So far we have discussed bullying and pencils always going astray. (The first part of the year was just getting the kids introduced to the meetings, we didn't start talking about problems till right before Thanksgiving break) The kids come up with possible solutions for our problem and vote on the best. They are doing awesome at it!