Goals of the Out on a Limb Website

How will the Out on a Limb: A Guide to Getting Along website improve your work with children?

Everyone gets into conflicts. Everyone has difficulties with other people. The Out on a Limb website will help youth work through some of these problems by using conflict management skills. Activities contained in the site are an integral step to improving relationships among children and between children and adults. The site will help:

• Improve Communication Skills – Both youth and adults will learn effective communication skills. Active communication is the most important tool in managing conflict, because it helps children express emotions and overcome the hardest part of conflict—listening to a different point of view.

• Identify Conflicts Early – As adults and youth understand the nature of conflict and gain tools to help resolve it, they begin to recognize and deal with conflicts before they grow into bigger problems.

• Frees Your Time To Do Important Things For Kids – Providing youth with conflict resolution skills allows them to effectively deal with conflict without the help of adults. Normally children are accustomed to adults telling them what to do when they are in conflict. The Think and Share choice allows children to develop their own solutions to work through their conflicts and allows adults to spend time elsewhere.

• Youth Explore Lasting Solutions to Conflicts – How many times have you told children in a conflict what to do to resolve it and two minutes later, the children are at it again? By exploring the issues underneath a conflict, children can discover the solutions that work best for them. These solutions last longer because they come from the people who understand the problem the best, those with the problem.

• Improve Safety – Conflict resolution allows children to feel physically and psychologically safe from harm. This allows them to get past the stress that accompanies long-lasting conflicts in order to focus on learning and working with others for the benefit of all.

• Meet State Learning Goals - In the areas of Social Sciences and Language Arts, this website meets several of the Illinois Standards for Learning for third grade and fifth grade. It isn't necessary to carve out a special time for this, in addition to all the other demands of your day, but it can be a part of what is happening naturally due to conflicts that your children may be having. It helps in communication skills, and meets the benchmark outcomes described in the introduction:
  
  General Learning Outcomes (benchmark outcomes)
  
  There are several learning outcomes, and these can be used throughout your general curriculum and in every day situations. The central theme has goals in the social sciences and in language arts. Children at this age really need to learn how to feel good about who they are in a social context. Mastery in conflict resolution is a step towards a positive and healthy self-concept.
  
  In the Social Sciences:

  • Demonstrate an understanding of how family and community affect daily living and personal choices.
    
  • Recognize that individual and group behavior entails responsibilities as well as rights.

  
  In the area of Language Arts:

  • Listen and respond appropriately to oral messages.
  • Use technology as a tool for communication and investigation.

  
  In the area of Expressive Arts:

  • Recognize that the body is an instrument of communication, reflecting moods, emotions and ideas.

Developmental Warning:

• Young children might have difficulty with perspective taking. This is a cognitive skill that is developed at different ages with different children.
  

• It takes time for young children to integrate the ideas of conflict resolution. It is with practice that they learn to use the skills. While the exercises that are included in this teachers' guide might not work for all children, they do provide the necessary practice in skill building to resolve conflicts effectively in different situations.
  

• Practicing skills is a way to integrate them into every day habit. Use these exercises while you are waiting in the hallway or during times when your students have to wait for something.

Introduction | Goals of This Website | Conflict Resolution Theory | How Can This Website Be Used?