Artefact 3-A
Building a sense of community and inclusion
Community meetings
The whole class assembled in a circle for our weekly community meeting
A page from our community meeting agenda book. This is an early example before we added acknowledgments to the meeting
Community meetings are an opportunity for the class to come together to discuss issues of concern that have been raised by members of the class, and to seek solutions for these together. Children can add items to the agenda throughout the week and may choose to do so individually or with one or two other children. This can help younger children, who may feel less confident to speak up, to raise issues of concern to them. Children can also nominate another member of the community they wish to acknowledge, which contributes to the positivity of the meeting and the class culture more widely. Children can also nominate to hold positions of responsibility in running the meeting (see Artefact 3-B).
Weekly class meals and FriYay activities
An invitation for FriYay
Children setting out their peers' lunches onto plates for our weekly sit-down meal
The class holding up their glasses to give a toast during our weekly sit-down meal
Children helping each other to practise their times tables, reading time and money skills
Once a week the class sits down together at a table for a meal in the classroom. Children who have nominated for responsibilities in the class are on a roster to organise different aspects of the lunch, such as setting up the tables and chairs into a single long table, helping to serve out their peers’ lunches onto plates, pouring glasses of water, assisting their peers to rinse their dishes at the end of the lunch, and loading and unloading dishes into the dishwasher in the neighbouring classroom. Children must wait until everyone is seated before eating, and at the outset of the meal, one child will give a toast to someone or something for which they are thankful. During the meal we focus on getting to know each other better while developing skills in conversation and practising good table manners. I support their conversations through prompts such as, “would you rather” questions (e.g. “would you rather have your own spaceship or your own submarine, and why?”), or inviting them to share jokes with each other.
In the afternoon after playtime, the children return to class and engage in workshops run by their peers to practise times tables, reading time, counting money and phonetic spelling. This is followed by a fun activity which changes every week.
Care of the environment
At the end of each day, the children work together to cleaning a part of the class, whether it is dusting shelves and materials, caring for plants or animals in the class, sweeping and mopping the floor, wiping tables and chairs, cleaning the kitchen, taking out the compost or sharpening pencils. Children may work either alone or with a partner for bigger jobs, and jobs are rotated periodically. Children that have demonstrated care and responsibility in their jobs may also become a job monitor, whose role is to check the shelves against a photograph to ensure each is cleaned and set up accordingly.
Restorative practices
This guide is used to scaffold children in having a restorative conversation, which helps them to develop an understanding of how their behaviour impacts others and conversely, how they are affected by the actions of others.
Supporting neurodiversity
To improve my knowledge of ASD and how to best offer support for children on the Autism Spectrum in the classroom, I completed a 5-hour professional development course with renowned Autism educator, Sue Larkey, on Teaching and Behaviour Support Strategies for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder.
