With the children I set up scenarios with different pictures, for example two children sharing, one child pushing another child etc. along with pictures of different emotional expressions. The children then voted for how they thought the children in the pictures would be feeling and compared this to how they would feel in the same situation. Some scenarios also asked the children to choose what they could do and what they thought the adult could do to help. This and the discussion that went with it allowed us to consider the children’s views when updating our Behaviour Management policy. The benefit of using ACTIVote was it engaged the children’s interest and they could all have their say, not just the outspoken few who always like to talk. By using ACTIVote the children are also developing citizenship skills by recognising that their ideas and opinions are valued.

The parents were also motivated by using ACTIVote, “it’s just like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire!” They were amazed at how their children had been using it after I spoke about some of the other voting activities we have been doing.

Compared to using traditional paper questionnaires we got some really useful discussions going with parents that we could use to update the policies on Parental Involvement, Behaviour Management and Complaints. We used a rating scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree. We wrote the comments and ideas that came from the discussions that arose from the results of the votes. The flipcharts were saved and examples were printed and filed with the policies- great evidence of parental and child involvement!