Morning Meetings

“05062014 ED Goes Back to School 1” by US Department of Education is licensed under CC BY 2.0

“Morning Meeting[s] [are] an engaging way to start each day, build a strong sense of community, and set children up for success socially and academically” (Responsive Classroom, 2016).

What are Morning Meetings?

Morning Meetings, as the name suggests, are classroom meetings that take place in the morning before any lessons begin. The teacher and their students come together and spend around 20 – 25 minutes sharing information centered around the following four components:

1. Greeting
2. Sharing
3. Group Activity
4. Morning Message

Continue reading below to learn more about the four components of a Morning Meeting and possible suggestions for each component.

Component 1: Greeting

This component consists of greeting one another in a specified manner, such as giving each other high-fives or fist bumps. An excellent way to personalize the greeting is to look to your students for help; what are some appropriate greetings do they believe would be fun to incorporate? Generate a list of responses so that you have a list of student-approved greetings to choose from for your next Morning Meeting.

Out of all four components, I find this one to be the most important. As with many social environments, in our classrooms we may notice outsiders — i.e., students who are not included in activities by their peers. The morning greeting can help students feel seen because everyone gives and receives a greeting.

Component 2: Sharing

This component can help increase the feeling of community within our classrooms. During this portion of the Morning Meeting, everyone has the opportunity to share their thoughts on a topic or announce an important event, moment, or activity taking place in their lives. I have witnessed students discovering similar interests among each other that they would have otherwise been ignorant to due to this component. For example, in the fifth grade class that I subbed in, one student shared that she went to the bowling alley for an event with some friends and another student mentioned that he was also in attendance at that event!

When choosing what to share, I found it helpful to follow this schedule:

– Monday: Sharing something cool/interesting/important that happened over the past weekend.
– Tuesday – Thursday: Responding to a prompt. Here is a free list of prompts that I found on TeachersPayTeachers.
– Friday: Sharing what you are looking forward to for the upcoming weekend.

I believe it is important to note that students must want to share in order for this portion to be meaningful. Not only does forcing a student to share open the floor to sarcastic responses, it also shows our students that their boundaries and how they feel is not important. It is OK if a student chooses not to share in this component

Component 3: Group Activity

This component might be the most fun out of all four components. During this portion of the Morning Meeting, everyone participates in an activity. The chosen activity “… helps students practice social and academic skills” (Responsive Classroom, 2016). Ideas include: a short game, a dancing session (Hi GoNoodle!), singing/rapping, etc.

The following video shows students singing a remix to the all-too familiar song Old Town Road by Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus. The teacher changed the lyrics so that it now focused on motivating her students to pass an upcoming test.

Component 4: Morning Message

This component wraps up the morning meeting with a message from the teacher. This message helps students prepare for the lessons they will be learning during the school day.

Have you implemented Morning Meetings in your classroom? What are some suggestions you have for fellow educators that may be new to this idea? Let me know in the comments!

Resources

What Is Morning Meeting? (2016, June 7). Retrieved from https://www.responsiveclassroom.org/what-is-morning-meeting/.