Articles

What happens in your classroom during arrival time? Those first minutes are so crucial for setting the tone and the pace for the day! The routines you put in place for arrival time help children reconnect to the classroom and their place in it, as learners and as classmates. Think…

Question: In many classrooms, the morning message chart is an important part of the beginning of each day and the first place that students go as they enter the classroom. On the chart, students find a greeting from their teacher, some news about what they’ll be learning that day, and…

Question: I often struggle to write the Morning Meeting message because my imagination runs dry. What suggestions can you offer that might help me come up with fresh and interesting messages? Answer: This is a common problem when teachers focus too much on being imaginative or entertaining when writing Morning…

During a recent visit to a third grade classroom, I was tickled by students' responses to a question on the morning message chart. The class was about to begin a unit of study on decimals, and the teacher was curious about what students already knew about the topic. She asked…

Here’s another children’s book that might come in handy early in the school year. Say Hello!, a picture book by Rachel Isadora, is a good one for when you are introducing Morning Meeting, especially greetings, to your class. In this book, Carmelita, her mother, and their dog Manny run errands…

Introducing Doing Math in Morning Meeting: 150 Quick Activities That Connect to Your Curriculum. As you envision the Morning Meetings you'll be holding with students this year, what do you see? Do you see math games? Counting? Measuring and graphing activities? It may not be common for teachers to use…

Carolyn Bush prepares her fourth grade students to start their Morning Meeting with a successful, safe, fun "One-Minute Greeting."

Recently, I was standing at an airport baggage claim area when a large ceiling tile fell and grazed my left shoulder. At about the same time as I felt the tile, I realized that a very large brownish-black rat had also been on top of it. The rat seemed as…

During a recent school visit, I marveled at the myriad tasks and responsibilities that comprise the first few minutes of the school day.  Watching one teacher calmly direct all this activity reinforced for me the value of establishing and practicing routines. It’s 9:00 am on a Monday morning in November.…

Tips on using Morning Meeting Messages and the last part of Morning Meeting, reading the message together, to set a positive tone during the build-up to winter holidays and vacation. Winter themes. As with sharing, you might include timely questions/themes in your morning messages at this time of year. Just…

Tips on using  Morning Meeting group activity to set a positive tone during the build-up to winter holidays and vacation. Consider levels of movement and activity. How does your class respond (especially right now) to activities that get them moving, singing, and playing? You might need to scale back on…

Tips on using Morning Meeting sharing to set a positive tone during the build-up to winter holidays and vacation. Themed shares. This is a great time of year to have some themed shares. For instance, you might ask students to share their answers to questions like: What is something you…

Tips on using the greeting component of Morning Meeting to set a positive tone during the build-up to winter holidays and vacation. Observe your students as they enter the room before settling on a greeting. Are they bouncing and skipping through the room, wrestling and using loud voices? If so,…

As the holidays swing into full gear, maintaining a productive and calm atmosphere in the classroom can be challenging. Students can be more fidgety, giggly, testy, and tired at this time of year. In December, children are also often distracted by the excitement of home activities and by the stress…

There’s a happy buzz in Mr. M’s third grade class. It’s late fall, and the children take pride in knowing just what to do as their school day begins. First, there’s the morning message their teacher has written for them. The children gather at the easel a few at a…

I firmly believe that the better I know students—the more I understand the joys and challenges of their daily lives—the more responsively I can teach them. Similarly, the better they know each other, the more cohesive and empathetic a classroom community we can build. In my classroom, several kinds of…

Mr. Saunders' class had been doing the sharing component of Morning Meeting since school started in the fall. After several months of daily practice, he knew he could count on sharers to speak clearly on a focused topic, and on their classmates to respond with on-topic questions or comments. Yet…

I’m new to the Responsive Classroom approach, but even in my first year of having Morning Meetings, the children’s social growth exceeded what I had typically seen in my kindergarten classes. For example, during the Sharing part of Morning Meeting, the students learned appropriate ways to ask questions about each…

Teaching Children to Make Caring Comments during Morning Meeting Sharing On a late spring morning, Mr. Marino’s fourth graders are gathered quietly on their Morning Meeting rug, all eyes on Joe, whose turn it is to share. “I played a basketball game on Saturday,” Joe says. “We lost, but my…

When Eric's father died suddenly just before a long weekend, Morning Meeting gave our school the safe structure we needed to help this second grader and his schoolmates cope with the tragedy. When we first got the sad news from Eric's family, we let each of the second grade families…

One March morning, children entering a fourth grade classroom take turns gathering at a chart on which their teacher has written a message just for them: March 7, 2005 Dear Invertebrate Investigators, Yesterday we continued our studies about invertebrates, and we put two types of food in our worm farm.…

Question: Do you have a Greeting that works really well for Morning Meeting with your students? A: When we do a Seat-Switch Greeting, the children enjoy moving around to sit in different spots—they think it’s really funny if they end up sitting right next to where they started out. They…

Megan’s Great Uncle John was dying of cancer, and she needed to share this distressing experience with her fourth grade classmates. During a Morning Meeting Sharing in October, Megan explained that her great uncle hoped to live until Christmas but was not doing well. She spoke concisely, and the children…

  Question: Do you have a theme that you like to use occasionally to guide Sharing during Morning Meeting? What makes it work well with your students? A: Usually, I use open-format sharing so that individual children get plenty of practice speaking to the group and asking for questions and comments.…

Question: What’s one activity you’ve found effective for the interactive part of the Morning Meeting News and Announcements chart? A: I’ve found math challenges to be very effective. For example, I might write on the chart, “Write either a mixed fraction or an improper fraction and convert it to the…

It’s sharing time during Morning Meeting in Ms. Roberts’s first grade classroom. Jarrod is enthusiastically telling his classmates about the photos they will see when they look at his “family album.” The book contains a picture of Jarrod’s mom sitting on the front steps of their house. It also has…