Building Skills | Restorative Teaching Tools

Building Skills

This section includes instructions for how to facilitate games and activities to build skills relevant to facilitating restorative practices, including asking open-ended affective questions, supporting creative ideas to repair harm, reflective statements, reframing, and understanding structural injustices.

Asking Good (Open-Ended, Affective) Questions

Curiosity Did Not Harm the Cat

A game for practicing asking good (open-ended, affective) questions and moving quickly between active-listening, speaking, and generating relevant questions in a low-stress way.

Shovel Face

A game for practicing asking good (open-ended, affective) follow-up questions and using reflective statements while deepening relationships in the group.

In-Person Version

Online Version

What Happened?

A game for experiencing the importance of the “What happened?” question in the restorative justice process and practicing generating open-ended follow-up questions on the spot to better understand the full story of an offense.

Two Truths and a Lie with Open-Ended Questions

A game for practicing open-ended follow-up questions and building relationships in the group.

Creative Ideas to Repair Harms

Out of the Box

A game to practice brainstorming and finalizing creative, strengths-based agreement items that are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Related to repairing the harm, Timely) for restorative justice processes.

In-Person Version

Online Version

Common Everyday Objects

A game that demonstrates the imaginative power of groups working together and thinking outside the box. This is a great game for teaching creative brainstorming while coming up with agreement items.

Repair Balderdash

A game to practice forming SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Related to repairing the harm, Timely), creative agreement ideas with a team.

Reflective Statements and Reframing

Mirror Mirror

A game to practice making reflective statements in a low-stress, fun environment.

Race to Reframe

A game to learn and practice the important facilitation skill of reframing (restating what has been said by one party in a way that can be received by the other party without them becoming defensive or reactive).

Elephant Ears: Advanced Skills for Listening

This activity helps us fine tune our active listening skills by developing understanding and practicing specific types of responses to the speaker. Learners will become familiar with the nuanced differences between reflective statements, affirmations, validations, and reframing.

Understanding Needs

Build the House

An activity to help students understand how unmet needs often lead to harmful behavior and also how harmful behavior creates needs. Students will be introduced to the Te Whare Tapa Whā framework for understanding needs.

Needs and Feelings Iceberg

An activity to help students understand the unmet needs that are at the root of challenging behaviors using the visual of an iceberg.

Understanding and Addressing Structural Injustices

Build the Nest

An activity to help students understand how structural injustices contribute to crime. Students are also encouraged to think about ways to address these issues restoratively.

Identifying, Navigating & Transforming Racial Justice

An activity to help students understand that restorative justice exists within and is informed by racist structures, institutions, and individual bias. This activity is based on Fania Davis’ The Little Book of Race and Restorative Justice.

Viewing History through a Restorative Lens

An activity to encourage learners to view historical or current events through a restorative lens. Participants will consider different perspectives, identify who was impacted, and think critically about what needs to happen now to begin to repair the harm caused.

Understanding the First Harm

Learn more deeply about the extent of harm suffered by native peoples as their lands were colonized and their rights, resources, and ways of life were stripped away. Consider what actions you can take toward restoring right relationship with native peoples.

Play the Game

Play the Game by Charlene Allen is a novel that explores restorative justice and the need for restorative responses to incidents of interpersonal harm, community violence, and larger structural injustices. This activity is designed as a companion to the novel.

Access the slide template here.

Exploring Our Reactions: Deepening Learning from DiAngelo's White Fragility

An activity intended for groups of white learners to reflect deeply on their own defensive reactions to awareness of their racism and provide a process to reframe how they are understanding and responding to that experience.

Differentiating between Restorative Processes

Race to Restore

A game to help students be able to differentiate between different restorative processes and understand when to employ each one in their community.

Naming Emotions

Not Just Happy, Sad, Mad: Naming a Rainbow of Emotions

Help young children to develop the key skills of identifying a wide range of emotions and cultivating empathy for the experiences of others.

Mindfulness

Practicing the Pause: Restorative Mindful Moments

The mindful pause interrupts reactions based on patterned judgements or assumptions and, instead, cultivates compassionate curiosity, from which a more empathetic and restorative response may arise.

Giving and Receiving Feedback

Feedback with Feelings and Needs

This activity will allow you to practice an approach to giving and receiving feedback that is grounded in respectful curiosity about individual feelings and needs.