Large Group Class Meetings Planning
Large Group Class Meetings can add much to the culture and climate of your school or team.
Planning for success with your Larger Group Class Meeting is critical.
Consider this set of questions together. One member of your group is the note taker.
1. Who will participate in our first Large Group Class Meeting?
2. How often will the Large Group CMs meet?
3. Where is the best place for it to take place?
a. How does the space need to be prepared?
b. How will everyone be seated?
4. How long will the Large Group CM take?
5. What will students in the Large Group CM do?
a. What do students know about being good CM participants? What else do
they need to know?
b. What do students know about participating as a facilitator in a CM? What
else do they need to know?
6. What will the adults in the Large Group CM do?
7. What results do we hope to see?
8. Who will benefit? In what way?
9. What skills will everyone need for this CM to run smoothly?
10. What do students and staff know already that will help the Large Group CM run
smoothly?
11. What needs to be taught to students and staff to help the Large Group CM run
smoothly? By whom? To whom?
12. How will late arrivals be included?
13. How will transition from the Large Group CM be handled?
14. How will the Large Group CM be introduced to the adults involved?
15. How will the Large Group CM be introduced to the students?
16. What else needs to happen for the Large Group CM to be successful?
17. After the Large Group CM:
a. In what ways did the Large Group CM play out as you had hoped?
b. What surprises cropped up?
c. What feedback has been collected from students and other participating
adults?
d. What do we still need to teach and practice before the next Large Group CM?
e. How will that happen?
18. What will we do differently next time?
19. When is the next Large Group CM?
20. Will the purpose of your Large Group CM be altered in any way?
21. When will we be ready to include parents in our Large Group CM?
22. How can we measure the success of our Large Group CMs?
23. How will we support more students in taking leadership roles in our Large Group
CMs?
School-wide rules for CMs: When principals and other school leaders work with students
and staff to provide school-wide rules, they model rules development for each class and
promote the school’s vision for safety, respect, and expectations for learning. School wide
rules are developed by consensus; however, the process for consensus development needs
to be planned with agreement of keyleaders including staff, students and parents. General
schoolwide rules will need to be adapted to various common areas of the school building
such as the lunchroom, hallways, playground, gym, and buses. Each group of students will
have to learn the schoolwide rules through explicit instruction by staff or older students.
They will need practice opportunities, reinforcement feedback for compliance to rules, and
logical consequence support for when rules are not followed.
Woods & Freeman-Loftis provide insight to generating effective groundrules that generate
positive outcomes (2010.) Rules should be articulated in positive ways and describe explicit
behaviors for students to use instead of starting the rule with “Don’t”. Groundrules should
be comprehensive and motivating. “Come to classroom meeting hands-free.” This, instead
of, “do not bring books, pencils, schoolbags, or anything else to classroom meetings.
Schools need to be mindful about implementing groundrules school-wide in
developmentally appropriate ways. The explicit teaching and practice is where
teacher/staff adapt the general groundrule to specific actions/behaviors per grade level.
Implied in all this is that (1) staff are designated specifically to work on ensuring development of
an optimal learning environment in classrooms and schoolwide, (2) classroom teachers are
learning how to implement "well-designed early intervention" in the classroom, and (3) support
staff are learning how to play a role, often directly in the classroom, to expand intervention
strategies as necessary.