Articles

As the holiday season gets into full swing, maintaining a productive and pleasant classroom atmosphere can become a difficult task. During this time of year, students are frequently distracted by the excitement of holiday events at home and school events such as assemblies, class plays, and holiday dinners, which can…

Helping students build relationships with each other is a key to creating an optimal learning environment. Stronger bonds mean students will be less likely to be unkind, to exclude others, to call each other names, or to stand by in the face of mean behavior toward a classmate. The safer…

Responsive Classroom Morning Meeting is a powerful way to create a classroom climate of respectful, engaged learning and the greeting component sets the tone by helping all students feel noticed and appreciated at the very start of the meeting. But how do you help ELL students participate fully in greeting?…

Responsive Classroom Morning Meeting is a great way to set a positive tone for the day of learning ahead while also having fun and building community. It’s also a great way to give students rich experience with the language arts. Into each meeting component—greeting, sharing, group activity, and morning message—teachers…

How can you keep the sense of comfortable routine while also varying Morning Meetings enough to keep students (and adults) interested and engaged? Greetings can set the tone for the whole meeting—and the whole day. Question: Coming up with enough greetings to keep things varied and fun takes time—the one…

Do you often wonder how to keep the sense of comfortable routine while also varying Morning Meetings enough to keep students (and adults) interested and engaged? Greetings can be especially important because they set the tone for the whole meeting—and the whole day. Here's another answer to a question teachers…

Do you often wonder how to keep the sense of comfortable routine while also varying Morning Meetings enough to keep students (and adults) interested and engaged? Greetings can be especially important because they set the tone for the whole meeting—and the whole day. Here is an answer to a question…

Do you think a lot about how to create Morning Meetings that positively impact each day and prepare your students for the learning to come? I'll share a little secret that has worked for me: Try planning Morning Meeting after you do your lesson plans for the rest of the…

A Standards-Based Approach to Morning Meeting Sharing Ryan holds up the book so all his classmates can see the cover and begins: "Reptile Facts is my favorite first grade book. Every first grader should read this book because it shares facts about reptiles." He displays a few pages showing similarities…

When Elizabeth Powell and I co-taught in an inclusion program for students on the autism spectrum, we discovered that Morning Meeting offered an excellent opportunity to address these students’ needs and to help them connect to their classmates by using two of their often overlooked strengths: humor and a passionate…

After doing many Morning Meetings, teachers often wonder how to keep the sense of comfortable routine while also varying the meetings enough to keep students (and adults) interested and engaged. Greetings can be especially important because they set the tone for the whole meeting—and the whole day. Here are answers…

How can we build upon children's natural sense of wonder about the world around them? How can we include more science learning during our busy school days? An answer is the Responsive Classroom Morning Meeting. Beginning each day with this purposeful structure helps strengthen the community of the classroom and…

Children need to develop the ability to think imaginatively and creatively. Children with imagination do a better job visualizing what they are reading, solving problems, entertaining themselves without devices, and thinking creatively in a variety of situations. I started thinking about the power of imagination recently after reconnecting with a…

Here's a Morning Meeting activity idea from 80 Morning Meeting Ideas for Grades 3–6, by Carol Davis: Encore! Students team up to connect vocabulary words with favorite songs. How to do this group activity: Place students into small groups of four or five. Call out a word or topic related…

Here's a Morning Meeting activity idea from 80 Morning Meeting Ideas for Grades K–2, by Susan Lattanzi Roser: Lost Tooth Poem Children will relate to this poem about a missing tooth! My Tooth   — anonymous My tooth fell out and left a space (pantomime tooth falling out) So big my…

Here's a Morning Meeting sharing idea from 80 Morning Meeting Ideas for Grades 3–6, by Carol Davis: Who Remembers My Favorite Book? Playing a fun remembering game builds on children's listening and memory skills. How to do this around-the-circle sharing: Tell students they each will have a turn to share…

Here's a Morning Meeting sharing idea from 80 Morning Meeting Ideas for Grades K–2, by Susan Lattanzi Roser: My Favorite Season . . . and Here's Why! Challenges students to articulate a reason for liking something. How to do this around-the-circle sharing: Tell children they will be telling the class…

Here's a Morning Meeting greeting idea from 80 Morning Meeting Ideas for Grades 3–6, by Carol Davis: Secret Handshake Greeting Creating secret handshakes taps students' creativity and builds community. How to do it: Students pair up and take a few minutes to create and practice a secret handshake and a…

Here's a Morning Meeting greeting idea from 80 Morning Meeting Ideas for Grades K–2, by Susan Lattanzi Roser: Backward Day Handshake Greeting Students pass along a friendly handshake, but say the greeting backward. How to do it: Choose a student to begin the greeting. The first greeter shakes hands with…

If you visited my classroom during Morning Meeting these days, you'd probably see first graders working with partners and using the conversation skills we've been working on all year. We're now doing lots of partner work during the school day, and Morning Meeting is one of the times when we…

By now my first grade students are pretty good at chatting with a partner. They know how to pair up quickly and how to decide who will go first. They sit knee-to-knee and look each other in the eye. They usually stay on topic, and each person has a chance…

Welcome to Morning Meeting in my full inclusion classroom. Twenty-one first graders sit in a large circle on a brightly colored rug. I'm in a small rocking chair, my hand lightly touching one child's back. Another adult sits behind a child, supporting him as he sits with his legs, encased…

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,…

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…