How fast time flies when you’re super busy. Family, friends,
and non-stop activities pretty much sum up my life lately-and I wouldn’t have
it any other way. It wasn’t until a few people asked me why I stopped writing
that I realized how much I missed it. A
major reason I took a break was to finish my Master’s paper. I felt guilty
anytime I was doing something for myself like reading a book for enjoyment
rather than class or blogging rather than working on my paper. Well, I finally
finished that thing and am incredibly happy with how it turned out. Turns out
the college must have liked it a little bit as well, because here I am with a
Master’s Degree J
The last year of my Master’s Class focused mostly on
research in my classroom. If you are a teacher or are thinking of going into
the profession, the rest of this post is for you. Morning Meeting is something
I’ve wanted to try since my first year of teaching, but didn’t know much about
it and wasn’t sure how to begin to implement it. With the push of my Master’s
Program, I decided to complete my research study on the effects of Morning
Meeting in my third grade classroom. Here’s what I found: (this isn’t the
entirety of my paper- who wants to read that whole thing? This is just the
section where I told my story- not sure anyone wants to read that whole thing either----however, if Morning Meeting is something you are thinking about implementing in your classroom, this may shed light on topics you are wondering about.
Introduction
It is the first day of school. I am excited. My class is excited. Everyone is ready to meet the people they are going spend the next 180 days with. The students walk into their new classroom, the shyest they will be all year, and I attempt to greet each one of them with a handshake and I say, “Nice to meet you.” However, I seem to get the same reaction from each student. The child sticks out a hand (sometimes the right, sometimes the left), looks away, and mumbles something that I am unable to hear and decode. As the first week of school progresses, students begin to come out of their shell and they are comfortable enough to communicate with one another. Although, as one student finishes a story, another cuts them off to begin their own. It soon turns into one student after another telling their story, without a break between anyone to clarify, comment, or ask questions about each others’ lives. Over the past two years this is how school has started in my classroom and it has set the tone for the entire year.
My students entered third grade without the basic social skills that I expected. How would they know them? If they are not learning them in school, they must be learning them at home. I thought, “What if there are students who do not have the correct modeling at home and they are completely unaware of socially acceptable manners?” There is not a set time in our seven hour school day where I am able to teach, model, and practice social skills like listening, speaking, and greeting. I felt frustrated that students were unable to show proper social skills, because they had not been taught the correct way to listen to one another and respond. I could tell the students also felt disappointed with the depth of conversation and lack of responses they got from one another.
As I walked outside, I saw kids waiting in line to play tetherball, two girls swinging side by side, and a soccer game beginning between the two third grade classes. This is a typical view for a teacher while on duty at recess. However, if I did not look close enough I might have missed the little boy hiding in the slide the entire recess, or the girl playing with sticks under the tree on her own. When I asked them why they were not playing with their friends, their response was synonymous: “I don’t have any.” These words broke my heart. How can I help these students? How can I help them make friends? How can I make it possible so no students in my classroom have to ever feel this way? These questions stuck with me and I could not get the picture of these two students out of my head.
I considered different team building activities to do with my students each day. These were quick and many times turned into competitions between different teams. This was not reaching the goals I had in mind. Then on a Tuesday afternoon in the teachers’ lounge, I overheard another teacher talking about a response a student had volunteered during a Morning Meeting. I had never heard of Morning Meeting so I asked her to explain it to me and she offered to allow me to sit in on one of them. This worked perfectly during my plan time. As I watched the students interact, I was truly amazed at the conversations her second graders were having. Students maintained eye contact with one another when they spoke, respected each other by listening, and responded to one another’s stories with comments and questions. The community was very evident with these young children.
I decided to sit in on a few more of my coworker’s Morning Meetings and began reading The Responsive Classroom (Kriete, 2003). Morning Meeting was developed as part of the Responsive Classroom approach of the Northeast Foundation for Children. It is a ritual that builds community and expresses important beliefs about the value of relationships in the classroom (Kriete, 2003). According to Kriete (2002), Morning Meeting connects social, emotional, and intellectual learning with the purpose of offering repetition of skills, respectful interaction, and motivation, which leads to students feeling significant. Morning Meeting sets the tone for learning and creates a climate of trust.
When I set out to incorporate Morning Meeting in my daily classroom, I thought back to the inability of my students when it came to greeting one another with a handshake and using eye contact. I also thought of the chaotic, sometimes unpurposeful conversations they had without really listening to one another. However, the images that stuck in my head were the ones of the children at recess who stated they had no friends to play with. It was my goal, through the use of Morning Meeting, to create a community of individuals that carry tools with them and are able to use them to be a better citizen and a better friend. It was not possible for me to reach every student in the building directly, but it was my hope that all students could observe how my students behaved, they too may pick up on the skills that my students practiced every day in Morning Meeting.
Procedures
In the fall of 2014, I began implementing Morning Meeting into my third grade classroom schedule. Each day at the same time students and I met in a circle for a 15-20 minute meeting. At the beginning of the year, I took the role as leader of the meetings, modeling and sharing my thinking aloud with students. A specific routine was taught to the students and posted on the bulletin board for students to refer to. [ See Appendix A] Each meeting started by the leader choosing a greeting. After students greeted one another, a question was posed to the group that the leader chose from the set of questions ring [ See Appendix B] or one they had thought of on their own. After sharing their responses, students moved on to self reflection where volunteers shared their responses to two questions: 1. What was one thing I did well yesterday? 2. What is one thing I want to work on today? Before the final activity, students who had good news or bad news were able to share with the group and receive feedback from his or her peers. Finally, the meeting ended in a group activity either chosen by the teacher, leader, or group. As Loughran (2007) stated, the sense of community through greetings and participation in fun activities can reduce fearfulness and anxiety among children in the classroom.
Findings
Throughout the course of my study, I found that Morning Meeting did have many positive impacts on my classroom. First, Morning Meeting fostered positive communication and collaboration amongst peers and teachers. In addition, it taught students social skills and provided opportunity for student leaders to emerge. Finally, Morning Meeting formed classroom community and helped build relationships between both the students and teacher. Details of my findings are as follows. Pseudonyms have been used to protect the anonymity of the participants.
Students became more willing to share.
Looking out and seeing twenty faces staring and waiting for your response can be nerve racking for any person. Now imagine a petite eight year old looking for the words to answer the teacher’s question, waiting for what feels like hours going by before the teacher ends the silence, with “Would you like to pass?” “It scares me to talk in front of everyone, sometimes I have stuff to say, but I just get scared,” Ariel confessed. This is a familiar sight at the beginning of each year. Normally, one or two students have a very tough time and cried when speaking in front of their class. This year was different though. It took only the first week of school to know that I had a much bigger group of students with signs of anxiety when speaking in the large group.
At the first Morning Meeting, students looked around nervously at one another, not sure what to expect. “Why are we sitting in a circle?” Danny asked. “And why do we call it a meeting?” Julia called out. Once we got settled and went over the procedures, the first greeting began. One by one around the circle students mumbled, “Good morning” to one another with little expression and no eye contact. I went over the proper way to greet someone once more, making sure to model exactly what I expected. When asked what was different from my greeting and theirs, Kylie responded, “You sounded excited when you said good morning to Charles. We didn’t sound like that.” “What did you notice about my eyes?” I probed the group. “You had your eyes looking at Charles.” The circle began once more. This time most students used expression when greeting their peers and spoke much louder than their whispers before.
Next came time for the question part of Morning Meeting. As the leader of the meeting, I explained that I would choose one of the questions from the rings and ask the group to answer it. I added that the ball would be passed around the circle so each student would have a chance to answer. I also expressed that saying “pass” was okay. “What is something fun you did over summer vacation?” I passed the ball. Some of the answers were, “I swam.” “Went to the park.” “Played video games. “ Most student responses were in a very quiet, mumbled voice. However, the majority of responses were “Pass.”
Once the ball went around to each student, I continued on to the self-reflection portion of Morning Meeting, showing no reaction to the lack of responses from the question before. I hoped to display to students that sharing as much as they want or as little as they want was okay. During Self-Reflection, students were asked to reflect back on something they did well the day before. I explained that three students would get to share and they could volunteer.. Danny was the only one to raise his hand. He shared that he got all of his materials organized the day before on the first day of school. Two more hands popped up. Danny rolled the ball to Jose. “I remembered to sharpen two pencils this morning,” Jose added. Although it wasn’t exactly what the question asked, Jose still shared his reflection on something he did well and was proud of. Four more hands were raised. Jose rolled the ball to Marissa who shared that she helped her mom at home with the dishes last night. More hands went up. It was clear that students’ ideas were sparking connections between the others who were listening. I was observing positive communication stemming from giving students the opportunity to talk to one another.
Following this, three more students shared something they were going to work on today. We moved onto the group activity of Morning Meeting. I showed students a quick game they could play with two people. This would be something they could do when they had a few minutes throughout the day. Students paired up with others next to them. I watched as Ariel hesitated to turn towards her partner. On the other side Jalissa and Tess peered over at each other wondering who would turn first. Students were nervous to interact with their peers and needed a little encouragement from me. Others took on the game right away, laughing and smiling at one another. “I won three times!” Danny announced.
Each day students participated in Morning Meeting which included greeting, sharing, and interacting with one another through activities. Students were encouraged to share, but were never forced. Day after day students grew in their communication skills with one another. When asked, “What makes you nervous at school?” Mariah responded, “I get nervous when the fifth graders walk by us at lunch.” Without hesitation, Brittany reassured Mariah, “ Just smile and say hi next time, they are nice.” Mariah smiled at Brittany instantly looking relieved. Students were helping each other out and showing that they were listening to one another and willing to share ideas and connections they had in response. “My favorite part of the day is Morning Meeting because everybody gets to share every day. It’s awesum,” Jose expressed in his questionnaire.
Students learned social skills.
“I noticed that some of us aren’t using eye contact when we greet one another, let’s try again and this time everyone should try to have eye contact when saying Good Morning,” Issac announced to the circle. After noticing the leadership Issac displayed during Morning Meeting, I asked him why he stopped group to have the kids restart. “I remember when you taught us that eye contact shows respect when you meet someone or greet someone and I saw that lots of kids weren’t looking at each other so I thought we should try again.” Moments like this, where students showed initiative to communicate and problem solve on their own, showed up many times during this study.
Recess always seemed to be a time when students typically got into small disagreements or had trouble getting along. I can remember at the beginning of the year, day after day students came in to tell me about who was being mean or who would not let them play. I saw most of it as tattling, but could definitely see students’ feelings being hurt. I thought Morning Meeting would be a perfect opportunity to have a discussion on appropriate social interaction and problem solving.
Leaders emerged.
Like every morning, students started by greeting one another and sharing answers to the question. Next, I explained my concerns about our classroom community and what I had been observing and hearing in the last couple of weeks. I asked them to volunteer to discuss what they thought might be causing all of the problems. “Sometimes people hurt my feelings when they say I can’t play with them or run away from me,” Alex stated. Others expressed that they knew they had hurt others’ feelings and were willing to admit it as a mistake. Students brainstormed ways they could problem solve on their own if a problem arrises. “We can just talk like we do in here and take turns sharing about what we think of the problem,” Kylie suggested.
After this short discussion with the students, their behavior noticeably was changing. When the students came in from recess, Cody explained that he almost got mad when he was playing basketball at recess when he thought Eric was cheating. “Instead of quitting or getting mad, I just stopped and told him how I knew the rules and asked him how he learned the rules. Then I said I could play his way.” I could see the look of accomplishment on his face.
When asked what she has learned from Morning Meeting, Madeline stated, “ I know how to shake hands with people I meet. I feel good about speaking in front of everyone and leading the group.” When students were first given the chance to lead Morning Meeting, almost all students were excited to sign up. They took pride in leading the meeting and were able to practice their social skills as leaders. “My favorite part of Morning Meeting is when I get to be the leader because I get to make decisions for everyone and make sure everyone is happy in the circle.” Julia stated. When students led, they also observed to make sure all students were being respectful during the meeting. When Eric was whispering while someone was sharing in discussion, the Morning Meeting leader that day, Danny gave him a warning by reminding the whole group to listen as a peer shared. When Eric continued to whisper, Danny asked him to go back to his seat. After the meeting I asked Danny about his decision. “He kept talking when Jalissa was sharing, even after a warning.”
Community and relationships formed.
As the two months of my study approached, I started to feel and see a close-knit community forming. I no longer had students coming into me after recess complaining about arguments during recess. No one had anything to tattle on or report to me. “Recess was so fun!” Cody exclaimed, after coming in from an afternoon recess. “Jose and I taught Cynthia and Mariah how to kick a corner kick and they even made some!” Students were coming in, breathing heavily, sweating, noticeably showing their intensity of play. Most importantly, students were coming in smiling, laughing and replaying the events of their last fifteen minutes with each other. The lack of problems we had from recess allowed us to get settled much faster than in previous years and right into our reading block.
On an October morning, Brittany prepared for being leader by choosing the greeting, question, and activity. Everyone joined in the circle and we started with a fistbump and “Good Morning (name).” Brittany then read aloud the question she picked out, “What do you want to be when you grow up and why?” As the ball was passed around the circle, it was my turn to share. Without hesitation I stated, “ When I get older I still want to be a teacher because I believe children are our future and I want to be a part of that.” I received a few eyebrow raises and head turns, like they were not quite sure what I meant. No one asked and the ball continued to move from student to student.
The next morning as students entered the classroom, Jared, a normally reserved student came directly to my desk. “What did you mean yesterday when you said children are OUR future? Who is OUR and what do you mean by we are the future?” A few girls heard Jared,lingering close by because they were surprised he was saying so much and even raising his voice in excitement. I explained to him and the girls hovering what I had meant, “I mean that you are the ones that will be making a difference for all of us later on. You will be the ones working, creating, and changing the world.” This concept seemed so huge to this young child, who just stared and pondered; however, he got it. “ Ya, I guess that makes sense that you like being a teacher then. I think that’s cool to think of.” Although a small moment, I felt like a connection with this student was finally made, not because I asked him what he knew about the moon’s phases or because I checked his prior knowledge on fractions. The connection was made through conversation, asking and answering questions, just talking about our lives and thoughts with each other.
In the last month of my study, I was still very curious about a few girls that still had not signed up to be leader for Morning Meeting. I had mentioned a few times to them, “Remember if you want to sign up to be leader there are still lots of spots.” However, I did not force the role onto anyone. On a December morning, Kylie came up to ask me if she could be a vice leader while Ariel was leader. Ariel trailed behind her waiting for my response. Ariel was one of the girls who had never chosen to be leader and typically “passed” during the question portion of Morning Meeting. I asked them to explain what they meant by this. “Well yesterday, we talked about the Vice President’s job and sometimes he helps the President lead. So I asked Ariel if I could be her Vice President during Morning Meeting and she said yes.” Ariel shook her head to show that she was in agreement. I agreed that they could sign up together.
A few days later, Ariel and Kylie sat next to each other in the Leader’s spot. In her quiet tone, Ariel announced that the greeting would be a two-handed high five. With a tap on Ariel’s leg, Kylie reminded her that she was the one who was supposed to start the greeting. After the greeting, Ariel cleared her throat and posed the question she and Kylie had picked out a few minutes before. “What’s your favorite wintertime activity?” Immediately students began to call out, “What?” “What did she say?” “What was the question?” Kylie whispered to Ariel. Ariel restated her question, this time much louder and the students began to raise their hands. After the meeting, I asked Ariel how she liked being the leader. Ariel responded with a smile, “I felt good.”
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| You will definitely want this resource if you are considering Morning Meeting for your classroom. It is packed with real stories, example activities, and a step by step guide on how to begin Morning Meeting in your classroom. |
