Welcome to the elementary level group. Bear in mind that your age ranges don’t have to match mine exactly. Honestly I just made an educated guess on where to draw the line and ran with it. It is all going to depend on your needs and the resources you have available to you. If this is the first post on TheTraumaTeacher that you are reading, stop what you are doing and rewind a few weeks to my “Support Groups for Kids?!” post before reading on.
This is where a classroom style group is really going to start making sense. Kids this age are either just starting school and learning the routines or already have a few years experience under their belts knowing what to expect. No need to try and reinvent the wheel here. Something that you will want to keep in mind with this age group, though, is the short attention span. Elementary schools have recess and hands on project learning for a reason. Children this age aren’t going to learn well by sitting quietly listening or even conversation. They need to be engaged in interesting things and moving around once in a while.
For littles, I have found it best to switch gears often and plan a series of activities related to the main topic so the kiddos don’t have enough time to get bored. It is also a good idea to give them an opportunity to burn off any excess wiggly energy before starting discussion. As with every other post, I would like to remind that my background is mainly in working with children affected by violence and abuse but truly believe that this basic layout can work for children of any demographic in need of support programming.
DROP-OFF
This is going to be highly dependent on what resources and spaces you have available to you as well as any schedule you are having to abide by. The most successful drop-off scenario I have had thus far has been an outdoor sign-in procedure. Parents were asked to accompany their child to the drop-off and actively sign their child into the group. This has a lot of positive benefits. It gave myself the opportunity to speak briefly with the parent about how the week has been and get a feel for if the family was in need of any further services or referrals usually out of earshot of the already playing child. It is a great low-pressure atmosphere for any children new to the group as they can choose to join a group of already playing children to get acquainted or play on their own and observe while they adapt. It also serves the aforementioned purpose of getting out any overflowing wiggles before the group. This is by far my favorite approach as it gives kids time to just BE KIDS around other kids like them.
In times where weather has been an issue, a backup plan I have used has been the parent settling the child in for dinner at drop-off. If the group I was facilitating wasn’t having a meal, I would have related “starter” worksheets made up and printed set up in a way that the children could access on their own as they entered along with pencils, crayons, or any other tools needed for the assignment. Unfortunately a downside to this approach with this age is that you will likely have kiddos still learning to read and write and may be unable to complete it on their own (usually leading to bored and frustrated misbehavior). I mostly use this approach if I am short on extra adult hands and have a combined littles/bigs group and older kids are available to help the younger ones. This is not a perfect approach and definitely has its hang ups but it can do in a pinch. You are basically just aiming to keep your group engaged and entertained long enough that everyone can filter in (someone is ALWAYS late).
TOPIC DISCUSSION
Imagine you’re a teacher. Now open your eyes because that is exactly what you are. Or at least to them you are, which is a good thing. School teaches kids to respect, listen to, and trust their teachers so let them believe it. No need to confuse them with titles they’ve never heard of. If you’re group is violence or abuse related, this can also have an added benefit should there be a visitation agreement in place and the child decides to starting talking about their favorite teacher Ms. Jessie and how fun she is during those visitations with the other parent. “Advocate” may raise eyebrows and trigger further questioning.
Again the number and subject of your topics is going to be totally relative to your needs and resources. My experience usually meant I was working in unison with an adult support program so I mirrored the format of that group when deciding how long my program cycles would be. If they had an off week with some sort of special event planned, I would plan something on my end as well. My group started when theirs started and ended when theirs ended.
In the groups that I have facilitated, the best basis for themes that I have found thus far have revolved around character education. Most children have heard the theme words I use from their teachers, guidance counsellors, coaches, and likely even their parents at home. An observation I noticed in myself as well as in these kids AND their parents is that the theme words I chose were used so often and freely that when I asked anyone what the word actually meant, they weren’t able to tell me. Take a moment for yourself and try to write down definitions for a few of the following words WITHOUT using the word in the definition: Humility, Forgiveness, Self-Esteem, Respect, Responsibility. You may be tempted to write examples instead of a definition, but those still don’t explain WHAT those words MEAN. That is what I chose to teach. Every lesson started with that exact exercise as I called on raised hands to try and give me a real definition for that night’s topic word. We then followed it up with the actual dictionary definition. My goal was to break these big, seemingly simple but surprisingly complex concepts down to their bare bones. This way, I wasn’t telling these kids where they should be seeing examples of each topic, but giving them the ability to evaluate situations on their own. I followed the definition with a few pre-planned discussion questions to encourage participation and critical thinking. Some examples of these open ended questions might have been: How do we show humility? What are the benefits of being responsible? What does low self-esteem look like? Who does forgiveness affect? Questions like these, I’ve found, do a great job at allowing a child to reflect on their own experiences and interactions in a gentle and healthy way. It is worth mentioning that with this age, you’re going to want to watch the clock and try to keep this section short with a max time of 30 minutes or the wiggles will emerge.
DRIVE IT HOME
This will be the bulk of your group time so prepare accordingly. As mentioned before, kids this age are wiggly and short fused. They aren’t going to cooperate doing one activity for too long. You have a couple of options here. You can have preset activities for each topic (I would recommend 2-3 for each) or you can use a method that worked for me and create a pool of activities that you mix and match from each week. This is a great method if you are just starting out and have more topics than you have activities and can also allow your group to revisit and recycle some old favorites from earlier in the session. Again, keep them short and prepare multiple. If you see your kids losing interest, move on to the next one. You also want to make sure you’re taking the time to reflect with the kids on how the activity relates back to the night’s topic. Don’t just tell them, ask why they think you chose that game. A crowd favorite of mine has always been a game I called “blind man.” It was super flexible because it could be easily adapted to almost half of my curriculum and the kids always asked to play it over and over. Their favorite was when it was Ms. Jessie’s turn to wear the blindfold and they got to tell me where to walk. If you’re interested in this activity, let me know in the comments and I will make a future post with more information about it.
SEND OFF
Now is when things can get a bit tricky if you don’t have procedures in place. For a long time, I struggled with being at the mercy of another group and never knowing when my group was going to end. Some sessions we would get through everything on time and I would just be throwing coloring sheets at the kids trying to keep them entertained until they were picked up. Other sessions we would be halfway through our first activity and giving directions with parents suddenly starting to filter in half an hour earlier than they were expected causing my entire group to dissolve into chaos. Any point I had been trying to get across was effectively shattered. There is a better way, but it takes a lot of persistence and communication of expectation. What worked for me was to have a waiting area set up for parents outside of my teaching zone with already printed and displayed information about what was going on with kids programming. This would usually consist of the weekly newsletter covered the night’s lesson plan, a calendar of upcoming events that month, and an extra handout or brochure detailing further information or a local resource to help continue practicing the skill learned that night. Some handouts might have self-esteem building positive affirmations for the family to practice, a list of age appropriate books about the nightly topic, or a calendar of easy and free/cheap acts of kindness for the parents to consider trying. I would also have instructions in this area that group was still taking place and would be finished momentarily.
Is everyone going to pay attention to this? Not at first and some maybe not ever. But with consistency, I hope you will have mostly success with this method. As I’ve said before, the best we can do is put the tools in a person’s hands and hope they use them. It isn’t our fault if they don’t, but it can't be said that we didn’t try and give it our all.
As always, I hope that this information helps you in your journey creating your own children’s programming. If you have any questions about any of the information in this post, what me to elaborate on anything specific, or would even like to share your own experiences, I would love to interact with you in the comments. As always…
Good Luck & Keep Fighting,
Jess ♥️
