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Morning Meeting and Academics

by Tina Valentine on June 2, 2011
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Students greeting one another in morning meeting

You may have heard it said: "Morning Meeting isn't another thing you add to the plate—it is the plate." If you use Morning Meeting in your classroom, you know about its benefits: a well-crafted Morning Meeting helps children transition into the school day, builds community, promotes social skills, supports learning, and more. Still, if you've been doing Morning Meeting for a while now—or if you need to prove that Morning Meeting time is "time on learning"—strengthening the connections between your Morning Meetings and your academic curriculum is a good idea.

You can incorporate academic elements into any part of Morning Meeting—greeting, sharing, group activity, or morning message. For instance, do an activity like "Sparkle," which uses spelling words—or ask a question in the message that gets students thinking about a new topic of study. One piece of advice: try challenging yourself to vary the subject areas you address, so you do something with a different subject each day—a math-focused greeting on Monday, science-oriented sharing on Tuesday, an activity that draws on social studies knowledge on Wednesday, etc.

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Photo © Jeff Woodward. All rights reserved.

I’m really excited that Responsive Classroom is offering a one-day follow-up workshop called Morning Meeting and Academics on August 16 in Kingston, NH. I've presented this workshop many times as a professional development offering at schools, but it hasn't been offered as one of our public workshops for a while. If you are looking for ways to re-energize your Morning Meetings next year, I hope you'll consider signing up!

If the Morning Meeting and Academics workshop isn't an option for you, these books and DVDs are a good place to start looking for ideas about integrating academics into Morning Meeting:

Good luck! And please share your ideas and questions about integrating academics and Morning Meeting by leaving a comment!

Submitted by Candace Roberts on June 4, 2011.

I continue to be amazed when I make the connections to our Morning Meeting throughout my day.  After using the RC Approach for 7 years now, I am really just strengthening this aspect of my practice.

I use to view MM as a really isolated classroom event.  Especially when I was just learning how to "do" the components.  Now, I see how I can make connections to the MM all day long.  It is pretty cool to see my first graders start to generalize that skill as well.  For example, when we learned about the 4 steps in problem solving, we needed to understand to step 3: Choose a strategy.  One little guy said "Hey!  That's like when we choose a strategy from our CAFE Board to figure out a tricky word when we read!"  Bless his little heart!

I also think it re-energizes the MM when you get to that "plateau" of understanding how it works.  Now, you connect it to your daily classroom events and subjects.  It becomes an organic part of your day...not artificial.  You raise the bar for yourself as a teacher thinking "How will I make this meaningful?  How can I connect it to math or LA or science today in order to help my kids learn?" It becomes the anchor for your day; the time when you really set the tone and focus for learning...like your rules set the expectations for behavior... and you keep coming back to both.  It is comfortable for the students and meaningful for everyone!

Candace

Submitted by Mark E. Emmons, M.Ed. on June 5, 2011.

Morning Meeting and Academics (MMA) is a great follow-up workshop once you have been doing Morning Meetings for a while! MMA helps teachers thoughtfully incorporate academics into Morning Meetings along with the social curriculum in a balanced way. 

I just got back from New Orleans where I presented this workshop to talented PreK through second grade teachers. These teachers had already taken the week-long Responsive Classroom I workshop, and some of them had even taken our second week-long workshop, RCII. Many of them had been having Morning Meetings on a daily basis for years.

They felt it was a "well worth it" kind of day, a day of continued learning for them to fine tune the skills with which they already were comfortable. One participant even said, "I thought I already   knew how to do Morning Meeting really well. I learned a lot more than I thought I would!" A comment like that is testimony to what Tina says in her article about the MMA workshop strengthening the connections between Morning Meetings and the academic curriculum.

I know when I was in the classroom, I tried to have as many times in my Morning Meetings when children had additional chances to practice the academics they were learning each day. Why not learn about incorportating another time of the day to practice Math, Science, or Writing instead of just during the blocks of time set aside for those subjects?

If you have the opportunity, do join us for one of the Morning Meeting and Academics workshops this summer. You won't be disappointed!

Submitted by Mike Anderson on June 7, 2011.

I'm excited to teach the Morning Meeting and Academics workshop in Kingston, NH this summer! I hope to see a lot of people there!

Submitted by Jennifer Kennelly on June 9, 2011.

I work part-time, job-sharing a 2nd grade classroom with another teacher. This fall will be our 3rd year of splitting up the joys and responsibilities of our room. In the past, I have hosted morning meeting, as I teach mornings while my colleague teaches afternoons. I am wondering about making a change, having the two of us co-host a mid-day meeting at the time I pass the torch to her, to aid in community building, continuity, giving both of us an equal voice before the children, ensuring that we cover a variety of academic subjects. Can anyone think of some possible drawbacks to a mid-day meeting? Thank you!

Submitted by Mike Anderson on June 13, 2011.

Jennifer-
My wife, Heather, job-shared a second grade classroom several years ago, and like you, she taught in the afternoons. She held an afternoon meeting every day to help her students transition to a new teacher and to get them ready for productive learning. Since she taught math and science each day, she embedded math and science content for the day into her afternoon meetings. She wrote a message that got students thinking about the afternoon and did activities that got them playing with and thinking about math and science.

Is your partner teacher going to run a meeting in the morning as well? (I know if I taught the morning session, I'd still want to run a Morning Meeting.) If so, I think the main challenge is to keep these afternoon meetings on the shorter side. For example, you might make sure the greetings are quick . . . greet people to your right and left, mix-and-mingle for one minute, etc. The sharing can also be focused more on academics than you might do in the morning, especially if your teaching partner is running a meeting in the morning.

A meeting to help students transition from the morning to the afternoon makes a lot of sense and will really help lend some continuity to the day!

Submitted by Arlene Long on June 21, 2011.

I am new to responsive classroom, but not to class meetings.  I love what I read in the newletter about the academics. When I grade papers I always keep a blank sheet of paper next to me. As I see little things (Awesome answers or even common mistakes)the students are doing, I write it down on this blank sheet of paper. Then I try to come up with a way to incorporate what I wrote down into an academic lesson and bring it into my morning meeting. My students love this time of the day. They came up with the phrase "Our learning time". It is very beneficial to everyone because of all of the interaction. I do this thing in my classroom called Ladies and Gentlemen. It is just words we use to describe how we should act and treat one another, but it works on so many levels. I can't wait until school starts to try all of the activities in your books. My co-teacher and I just ordered several.