What resources are there to help with dealing with playground conflict?
Q: Do you know of any good resources about assisting primary children in dealing with conflict in the playground? My school has great children who generally get on really well but I would love some information about peer counselling for children or how to empower them to work more effectively through their issues.
Jenny: Well, obviously I am going to recommend my own resources as I am not that altruistic!!! I love the book I wrote with Georgia Thorp called ‘All Year Round; Exciting Ideas for Peaceful Playtimes’. It’s a comprehensive practical manual with lots of case studies from schools in it. It gives you a six week training programme for playground buddies. There are lots of ideas in this book to help empower children during lunchtimes.
Equally, Lorna Farrington’s ‘Playground Peacemakers’ is very useful. (Loxley Enterprises 2000) and ‘Lets Mediate’ by Hilary Stacy and Pat Robinson (Lucky Duck 1997). Both these books give lots of ideas on how to help children become more effective at lunchtime. My premise is that if children are involved in enough exciting ideas they won’t become so involved in conflict. We encourage schools to teach playground games in PE and to demonstrate games in Circle Time. We also encourage schools to start something called Craze Of The Week. Each week the school will start off a Monday assembly with a new craze; skipping, juggling, hoola hoops, French Skipping – then a huge box of that activity is sent out for a week only and then the craze is changed for the following week. There are a million ideas schools can implement to make lunchtimes a really fruitful time. I get worried when I work in schools that have not provided enough exciting ideas, but are providing wonderful mediators, as it encourages children to create conflict in order to gain attention. I know this does not apply in your case – but I do want schools to involve the whole school community in working out a lunchtime policy…and only then bring in mediation once they are happy with what children are learning. We also have a supervised community task force, comprising of a group of children who are kept so busy they cannot get into trouble. I hope you can get the book as it is full of these types of ideas. Good Luck
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