Kelso's Choices!

    
Conflict or disagreement is normal and often happens when children get together. However, hurtful words, gestures, or physical attack are unacceptable ways to deal with conflict and disagreement at school.  In the younger grades we have begun an exciting new conflict management program entitled Kelso’s Choice.  This program features a frog named Kelso, who teaches students to differentiate between small problems that they can solve and those that are potentially dangerous and serious.

Our goal at Lee Elementary is to teach students several positive ways to deal with these minor conflict situations.  To do this, we are asking students who have minor problems to try at least two of the following ideas:

1.      Go to another game or activity.

2.      Share and take turns.

3.      Respectfully talk it over and listen to each other.

4.      Walk away from the problem.

5.      Ignore the problem behavior.

6.      Tell the person to stop the problem behavior.

7.      Apologize.

8.      Make a deal or compromise.

9.      Cool off.

Additionally, we will be encouraging students to report serious and frightening problems to the nearest trusted adult.  By using this plan, we believe that our students will develop effective problem-solving skills that they can use again and again.  It will help them to deal with conflict in a positive manner and to make appropriate decisions.  Knowing what to do will help students reduce the stress and number of conflicts they have at school and at home.  We encourage you to become familiar with this program and use it in your home.  By working together, we can develop a healthy life skill for young people to use at home and at school.

In kindergarten we learned about each choice and then colored our own wheel:

In first grade we made our own Kelso puppets:

In second grade we filled in the choices we remembered then drew out examples of how we could use Kelso's choices:

We also watched this fun music video, "It's Your Choice Baby!"