Conducting 4-H Meetings

Why is This a Key?

Key 4 helps you to understand what material is covered at a 4-H club meeting. We understand that you may be nervous about hosting your first meeting, but don’t be. The information presented below will help you to conduct 4-H club meetings.

Having well-planned meetings will allow youth to:

• Acquire new knowledge and share ideas.
• Develop self-confidence and leadership.
• Develop responsibility and commitment.
• Make new friends.
• Enjoy recreational activities.

Keys to Understanding

The Meeting Place

It is important that the space is well-lit and there is comfortable ventilation. Arrange seating so that everyone can see. Convenient workspace should also be considered.

Comfortable Atmosphere

Atmosphere often determines behavior. Use the 4-H and American flags to help set the tone of your meeting. Remember that members feel best and gain most when they are at ease. Create positive situations that members feel the need to “join in.”

Feelings of Acceptance

The key is to enable all members to participate with specific jobs and responsibilities. Many clubs accomplish this by getting members involved through club officers, committees, demonstrations and talks, community service, fund-raising, and group projects.

Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan

Short, snappy action-packed sessions are interesting and have purpose. Members take part more wholeheartedly if they help plan an activity.

Start and Stop On Time

You and club officers set the standard for the group. Time is valuable. Habits, good or bad, are formed by practice. Teach your members to use their time wisely.

Help the Group Set Behavior Standards

Members need to know what is expected of them. Every club meeting is an opportunity to teach by example and discussion. Personal cleanliness, neat dress and appearance, mutual respect for people and property are important qualities that you should teach.

Encourage Each Member to Take Part

Your faith and guidance in each person’s ability will make many things possible. Business, project work, community services, and social activities can be exciting and fun if: “I belong to the group and am active in what the group does.”

Encourage Parliamentary Procedure

In a democratic club, each member has a chance to express himself. Parliamentary procedure is an orderly way to make this possible. It’s really a set of good manners for respecting the views of others. Members should know how to make a motion, address the group, express themselves and make decisions.

Give Officers Responsibility

You will need to guide, but stay in the background, to give them confidence in themselves and their abilities.

More Tips for Effective Meetings

• Plan meetings with variety.
• Communicate upcoming events, dates, and responsibilities.
• Consider the age of the members.
• Recruit experienced members to help the meetings go well.
• Meet with the officers.
• Encourage a free discussion period during each meeting.
• Ask members instead of telling them.
• Praise democratic participation.

What Key People are Saying

Our members choose their own officers and serve on committees in the Club. They learn responsibility and the need for peer support. This makes the project learning experience better for them. It helps them to be leaders later in school clubs. — Elizabeth Williams-Young, Cuyahoga County 4-H Advisor, 1999

Members find out what they like and choose their own projects. Adults help the officers, and the members really go for the idea of running their own club. — Rosetta Johnson, Cuyahoga County 4-H Advisor

Keying In

Use this worksheet to help you collect your thoughts as you plan to get your group or Club started:

Put together a good meeting by using the words below to fill in the blanks in the statements about how to plan for success:

Agenda, Behavior Standards, Involved, Meeting Place, Parliamentary Procedure, Plan, Run, Welcome

1. The Agenda Behavior Standards Involved Meeting Place Parliamentary Procedure Plan Run Welcome _____________ should be comfortable, be suited to the activity, and should be set up to allow everyone to take part easily.
2. Members enjoy meetings more and are more attentive when they help Agenda Behavior Standards Involved Meeting Place Parliamentary Procedure Plan Run Welcome _____________ and Agenda Behavior Standards Involved Meeting Place Parliamentary Procedure Plan Run Welcome _____________ the session.
3. Members should be involved in setting rules or Agenda Behavior Standards Involved Meeting Place Parliamentary Procedure Plan Run Welcome _____________ of the group that are fair to all.
4. Each member should have the chance to feel Agenda Behavior Standards Involved Meeting Place Parliamentary Procedure Plan Run Welcome _____________ and Agenda Behavior Standards Involved Meeting Place Parliamentary Procedure Plan Run Welcome _____________ at each meeting.
5. Use of an Agenda Behavior Standards Involved Meeting Place Parliamentary Procedure Plan Run Welcome _____________ and very basic Agenda Behavior Standards Involved Meeting Place Parliamentary Procedure Plan Run Welcome _____________ can help set a tone of structure and security and can help things move along smoothly and successfully.

Contact Info

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To claim your free prize recognizing your response, please fill in the information below and click the “Send Survey!” buttonplease return this sheet to the address shown below.

4-H Keys for Leaders
2490 Lee Boulevard, Suite 108
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118

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Key Resources

• The Green Pages 4-H Advisors Program Book
  Ohio State University Extension Fact sheet 4-H PO6-99 “Effective 4-H Club Meetings,” Columbus, OH, The Ohio State University
• The Ohio 4-H Club Advisor’s Guide 4-H 955
  Ohio State University Extension

Teaching Outlines

We hope you found this material helpful. If you did and would like to use it as the topic of a training session with other youth leaders (time - Approx. 1 hour), select the topic(s) of interest to you below, fill in your E-mail Address and click “Send!”send this page to us at the address below:

4-H Keys for Leaders
2490 Lee Boulevard, Suite 108
Cleveland Heights, OH 44118

We will contact you with more information about our Teaching Outlines.

E-mail Address: ____________________________

I would like Teaching Outline information for the following Keys:

1. What is 4-H Youth Development?
2. Getting Started
3. Nuts & Bolts of Planning Your Club Activities
4. Conducting 4-H Meetings
5. Planning Your Program
6. Ages & Stages of Youth Development
7. Keys for Leaders
8. Developing Assets In and Around Young People

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1. What is 4-H Youth Development? | 2. Getting Started | 3. Nuts and Bolts of Planning Your Club Activities
4. Conducting 4-H Meetings | 5. Planning Your Program | 6. Ages & Stages of Youth Development
7. Making Learning Fun and Exciting to Young People | 8. Developing Assets in and Around Young People

This youth leader's guide my be reproduced and distributed for educational purposes if the following attribution is made under the title of the guide:

A PUBLICATION OF
Brandyce Cogar, Program Assistant, 4-H Youth Development, and
Gregory M. Yost, Extension Educator, 4-H Youth Development, Youth Outdoors, Cuyahoga County
OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY EXTENSION, CUYAHOGA COUNTY

Unless otherwise noted, all material within may be distributed freely for educational purposes. Anyone redistributing the material must include this copyright notice and must use the appropriate citation including the URL. Credit should also given to Diamond Advertising, Inc. of Cleveland, Ohio, for development of web-based format. Also, we would appreciate users sending notice to Gregory P. Siek as to how the material is being used. No reproduction for commercial use is given without a written permission agreement.

Series developed with grant support from Ohio 4-H Foundation, 2004.