Inside a Successful Morning Meeting
If you are wondering “what is morning meeting”, then you have come to the right place! Morning Meeting is a 20- 30 minute classroom meeting in which social emotional learning is promoted while starting each day off with a meaningful routine. There are a few steps to making a successful morning meeting routine.
Morning Meeting is an essential component to the Responsive Classroom approach. I believe in the Responsive Classroom principles because they emphasize the importance of social emotional learning alongside academic content for educational success.
What is Morning Meeting?
It is structured, intentional circle time at the beginning of each day. I love how it starts each morning with my class in a fun way that gets us all in the mindset to learn and be successful!
As I mentioned before, Morning Meeting is typically 20-30 minutes first thing in the morning. The first year that I learned about and facilitated a Morning Meeting routine in my classroom, I was in a full Responsive Classroom school, so we were given 30 minutes a day to hold our meetings. Since then, I have not been in schools which allocated time in the schedule, so I have gotten really good at making my Morning Meetings 10- 15 minutes and just as impactful!
Responsive Classroom Morning Meeting thrives on building relationships and cultivating a positive class culture. The routine consists of four components in the following order:
- Greeting
- Sharing
- Activity
- Morning Message
Morning Meeting Greeting
The greeting is the most significant component, because it welcomes every member of the classroom in a prominent and inclusive way. This is a chance for all students to be greeted by the teacher or a fellow classmate in the circle. There are a variety of greetings to make this an interactive part of morning meeting.
Goals
- emphasize importance of each member of the class
- welcome each student to the classroom
- start the day on a positive note
- use each students’ name to inspire belonging and value
- set a tone for classroom community
Looks Like/ Sounds Like
- students maintaining eye contact
- turning body towards the person they are speaking to
- saying students’ names
- taking turns
- equal time to talk/ be recognized
- teacher participating
- calm inside voices
This video details the types of greetings you can use with your class and leads to a freebie!
Morning Meeting Sharing
Sharing is the component when students are contributing to the meeting with personal information about themselves. An environment should be created in the circle that anything that a student wants or needs to share will be respected and valued. There are many different formats that sharing can take to help it best fit your class! You can use a variety of share questions and prompts to facilitate a whole multitude of interesting conversations!
Goals
- builds connections between students
- emphasizes the importance that students’ lives and interests outside of school hold in the classroom
- promotes self reflection
- provides students an outlet for speaking about themselves
- builds a community of empathetic listeners and responders
- practices participating in conversations
Looks Like/ Sounds Like
- students silent with eyes on the speaker/ sharer
- students confidently and comfortably sharing information about themselves
- classmates asking questions and responding with appropriate comments
- equal amount of attention and speaking time for each student
- happiness as a result of sharing information and receiving responses
Interested in more morning meeting freebies? Join my email family!
Morning Meeting Activities
Morning Meeting games and activities are a 5-7 minute opportunity for students to be playful and have fun first thing in the morning. This sets the tone of the classroom for the entire day and provides many social emotional benefits. Students practice a whole variety of social skills in every game, integrating academic content, and building relationships between classmates while participating together.
Goals:
- builds classroom community through fun interactive game play
- promotes inclusion and cooperation
- practices social emotional skills
- creates a culture of active participation where everyone’s contribution is highly valued
- builds relationships amongst the class by working together and forming bonds
- guides transition from whatever was going on this morning outside of school to help students’ focus their attention on learning
Looks Like/ Sounds Like
- teamwork between students
- observing, focusing, thinking creatively, and problem solving
- using self control
- respectful, inclusive language
- calm controlled body movements
- indoor voices
- smiling fun- cooperative rather than competitive
Get some FREE activities here to get started!
Morning Message
Each day when the students enter the classroom, post a morning message somewhere for them to read. It usually takes the form of a letter from the teacher and provides them a task to do right away or information about the upcoming day. At the end of morning meeting, the class revisits the message together to discuss the task it asked to do, read it together, or talk about the information it provided the students.
Goals:
- provide daily routine and consistency
- a way for teacher to communicate expectations or a task to all students when they arrive
- practice academic content
- model proper writing- spelling, punctuation, & sentence formation
Looks Like/ Sounds Like
- typed on smart board or hand written on whiteboard or chart paper
- grade level appropriate words and format
- students silently reading message when they enter the classroom
- teacher reviewing the message to clarify or discuss any important information
Depending on the age of your class this part can take a varying amount of time. The message does a lot in primary grades, like omitting vowels of certain words to facilitate practice decoding and solving the word.
Morning Meeting Books
If you are just starting to explore the wonderful world of morning meeting, here are some excellent books from Responsive Classroom that will help you learn more and know where to begin!
If you are wondering where you should dive in first, the video below goes through how to set up your daily routine to use for morning meeting. There is also a link to a freebie that helps you plan out teaching your students your desired procedures.
Interested in more morning meeting freebies? Join my email family!
Affiliate links were used in this blogpost.
