Check-in prompts: These can be general and informal ways to check-in with students, or they can be specifically related to a classroom concern. Remember that these should be age specific. For younger students who are just beginning to learn how a dialogue circle works a prompt can be as simple as "what's your favorite food?" or "what's your favorite toy?" for slightly older students, a prompt can be a bit more complex such as "what is a goal you have for yourself?" or "what do you do to make yourself happy when you feel sad?". For classrooms that are wanting to use a talking circle as an opportunity to address a specific issue, the prompt can be related to that issue; such as "yesterday at lunch our class was the last to go to recess because we were too loud. What is one thing that you can do in the future to help fix this problem?".
Some teachers will have each student anonymously fill out a note stating what they would like to talk about during the next talking circle. The teacher could give three choices for students to chose from, or leave it open for students to decide on their own. If there is a common theme among students, the teacher will then use this as the prompt. This could be used with the "what I wish my teacher knew(see #10)" box throughout the week leading up to a taking circle at the end of the week.