Morning Meeting

Hey there! Today I am here to talk all about Morning Meeting in my 2nd grade classroom.

As you may know, I come from an early childhood background. With that being said, social and emotional development is at the front and foremost of my teaching philosophy. When I knew I was going to be teaching 2nd grade, I knew I needed something that fostered social, emotional, and academic development every single day in the classroom. I wanted a way to start our day off on a positive and exciting note while building classroom community. Enter morning meeting!

What is Morning Meeting?

Morning meeting is a 20-30 minute class meeting at the beginning of each school day.

It has four parts that go in sequential order:

1. Greeting: Students greet each other by name, often including handshaking, singing, movement, and other activities.
2. Sharing: Students share some news or information about themselves and respond to each other, articulating their thoughts, feelings, and ideas in a positive way.
3. Activity: The whole class does a short, inclusive activity together, reinforcing learning and building class cohesion through active participation.
4. Message: Students practice academic skills and warm up for the day ahead by reading and discussing a daily note to the class posted by their teacher.

The greeting is the first part of morning meeting. There are tons of resources out there, including this one by Sarah Garner, that have lots of ideas for fun and fresh greetings. Try to keep it simple at the beginning of the year. Once your students get in the routine of greeting, try one such as "hit the floor."

This greeting goes like this: "1,2,3,4! Come on _______ hit the floor! We're so glad you're here today, hooray, hooray, hooray!" Each student will go to the middle of the circle and do a dance when their name is called... I challenge them to get back to their spots by the last “Hooray!”

My students LOVE the hit the floor greeting. It's not only fun, but it makes every child feel welcome and excited to start the school day. Check out the resource above for other great greetings, as well as The Morning Meeting Book by the Responsive Classroom.

 After our greeting, we dive right into the sharing portion of morning meeting (one of my favorite parts!) In my classroom we have a sharing schedule. Every student has a particular day that he or she shares on, with Friday being our "overflow" day. I let the students that are sharing that particular day bring an appropriate object to share if they would like.

I have seen some teachers have a structured prompt for their sharing time, but I like to keep it open ended. That way there is not only any planning on my part, but also so that the child can truly share what is on his/ her mind.

This is the part of morning meeting that I believe has been the most transformative in building our classroom community so far. Letting students share something with the class, whether it be fun or serious, plays a vital role in building a positive classroom community.

 After we share, we get to participate in a group activity! The resource I shared above by Sarah Garner includes various different activities, as well as The Morning Meeting Book by the Responsive Classroom. In a nutshell, the group activity is a short, fast- paced game or song that involves everyone in the class. It helps to build class identity and supports crucial learning goals.

Some activities that we do incorporate academic skill- building and some offer practice in generalized skills such as listening, following directions, exercising self control, and/or practicing deductive reasoning.

One of my class favorite activities to do is called Follow the Leader. It goes like this: 

Choose one student to leave the circle and stand where she cannot see the group. Choose a “leader” - the leader will do a movement (such as stomping) and the rest of the class follows. The leader changes the movement regularly and the others follow the new movement. The hidden student returns and tries to guess the leader. After three tries, reveal the leader.

Some of the other class favorite are My Bonny, Aroostasha, Oliver Twist, and Mental Math Pushups. When I want to tie in academic content, a popular activity is "I Have, Who Has." This game not only integrates grade specific content but allows students to practice listening and speaking skills!

The Morning Message is the last part of the morning meeting. It is a letter to the entire class (written by the teacher) that provides information about the day.

Some days I use it to give an outline of our day while other days I use it to review or explicitly tie in academic content. At the beginning of the week I use it to model a decoding strategy. You can see in one of the pictures above we were working on looking for chunks in the word that we already knew to determine the word we were trying to read!

I love the morning message because it not only allows me to model and tie in academic content, but helps ease the transition into the rest of the day. It helps build the students' excitement about the day's learning!

The Power of Morning Meeting

I believe that Morning Meeting clears away the obstacles that impede children from feeling safe and engaged in school, creating the space for students to take care of each other and to do their best learning.

If you currently do not use Morning Meeting in your classroom, I highly encourage you to try it. We do every part of morning meeting. Every day. No excuses. My student's love it, and I know yours will too!