Responsive Classroom Morning Meeting is an engaging way to start each day, build a strong sense of community, and set children up for success socially and academically. Each morning, students and teachers gather together in a circle for twenty to thirty minutes and interact with one another during four purposeful components.

The Four Components of Morning Meeting

1. Greeting: Students and teachers greet one another by name.
2. Sharing: Students share information about important events in their lives. Listeners often offer empathetic comments or ask clarifying questions.
3. Group Activity: Everyone participates in a brief, lively activity that fosters group cohesion and helps students practice social and academic skills (for example, reciting a poem, dancing, singing, or playing a game).
4. Morning Message: Students read and interact with a short message written by their teacher. The teacher crafts the message to help students focus on the work they’ll do in school that day.

Goals of Morning Meeting

• Set the tone for respectful and engaged learning in a climate of trust
• Build positive community by fulfilling students’ need to belong, feel significant, and have fun
• Model and practice social-emotional skills
• Review or practice academic skills or content in a way that gets students interested in the learning to come

Morning Meeting and Academics

Rather than something separate to do that takes time away from academics, Morning Meeting is an ideal practice for highlighting academic content in a way that is active and interactive, leading to joyful and energetic learning. Making learning fun and engaging during these gathering times encourages students to be intrinsically motivated to learn. For more on ways you can incorporate academics into Morning Meeting, check out “Improving Academic Outcomes Using the Responsive Classroom Approach” and browse our Doing Academics in Morning Meeting book series, which you can find out more about in the Further Resources section below.

Popular Articles about Morning Meeting

We also have dozens of articles on Morning Meeting, including:

• Everything You Need to Know to Use Morning Meeting at the Start of the School Year – Morning Meeting is especially impactful at the beginning of the year because it can help you build a strong sense of community with a new class of students.
• Keeping Morning Meeting Greetings Fresh and Fun – 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.
• The Power of Morning Meeting – The earnest fourth grade girl straightened up tall and looked around the circle, drew a deep breath and began: “Our greeting today will go like this. First you say your name, then you say when you would like to have lived. Then we’ll all greet you back by saying ‘Hello’ and your name. I’ll go first so you can see how it’s done.” I noticed her hands folding and unfolding in her lap—perhaps she was a bit nervous—but her eyes sparkled.
• Morning Meeting is for Everyone – 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 in blue braces, stretched out. Wiggling beside him, another child sits on a sissel seat that encourages balance and provides tactile input.

Further Resources

The Responsive Classroom bookstore has comprehensive Morning Meeting resources for teachers new to the practices and those who have a wealth of experience and are looking for new component ideas to share with the students.

The Morning Meeting Book, 4th Edition has everything you need to bring Morning Meeting to your students.

Looking for new Morning Meeting ideas? These resources are full of new ideas for every component:

• 80 Morning Meeting Ideas for Grades K-2
• 80 Morning Meeting Ideas for Grades 3-6
• 99 Activities and Greetings Great for Morning Meeting… and other meetings, too!

Looking to incorporate academic content into the components of Morning Meeting? Check out our series:

• Doing Science in Morning Meeting
• Doing Language Arts in Morning Meeting
• Doing Social Studies in Morning Meeting