Collaborative learning, group activities, team sports are just a few options to encourage, from a young age, social-emotional learning, assuming roles and responsibilities within a small group while pursuing personal success and team success.

This activity involves a set of rules that can become our students’ “second nature” and constitute the principles of networking in their adult life. The earlier our students learn how to think “win-win”, the more successful their relationships and their actions will be,  their self-esteem, confidence in the future success and their personal success and society will increase.

Equip your students with a set of basic rules of communication. If you model them in class, your students will practice them in teamwork, everyday  conversation or relationships.

Formulating the principles in an accessible language, will help the students aim to:

– talk in turns; only when the first finished his speech, the next may intervene

– talk on the subject, without digressions

– share ideas

– all ideas are valuable

– all questions are valuable (there are no wrong questions)

The “win – win” principle is very useful in conflict management. If each of those involved explains his/her “win” in that situation, they can find solutions together, taking into account the “win” of each other.

When we think “win – win” we value the wishes of the other as much as we value ours, the solution agreed will benefit both parties, they cooperate in solving the conflict (it’s not a competition about who impose his/her point view on the others), we have the courage to express our wishes and, at the same time, to communicate our ideas with respect to the interlocutor and his opinions, even if we do not always agree.

Read the information about “talking stick” – specific technique practiced by American Indians – and discuss them with the students then practice along in different situations. You can be creative and choose different objects as “talking stick” : a teddy bear, an apple…

My students loved this group communication strategy so much that they proposed to include it on our list of rewards.