Last year, I wanted a strong, positive start for my second-grade classroom. I wanted a community-building structure, and I wanted students to understand and effectively use the structure as soon as possible. Morning Meeting became that structure. I hoped that if I got the meetings going right away and built student awareness of the components gradually, and if I selected appropriate “getting-to-know-you” greetings, shares, and activities, the stage would be set for a successful year.

Start with modeling and practicing
Modeling was one of the most important activities of those early weeks of school. I modeled each and every aspect of Morning Meeting. To make the modeling more effective, I spread it out over many days. Nothing was left out. We modeled and practiced the signal for silence and did some activities that helped us learn to pronounce everyone’s names correctly. We modeled and practiced greetings at the start of each meeting. I introduced the morning message and modeled how to read and respond to it. (We modeled and practiced routines outside of the classroom, as well, like going through the lunch line, and making polite comments to the cooks as we were served.)

Once the signal, greetings, and morning messages routines were in place, we learned some quick whip shares (brief responses to a shared prompt). In October, we added “special” sharing: a student sharer introduces a topic, and classmates ask follow-up questions and comments. My student teacher and I modeled speaking, listening, making positive comments, asking questions, and responding appropriately. With the emphasis on strong, clear, friendly voices and eye contact, all my students improved their public speaking skills. They looked forward to both sharing and listening.

We ended our meetings with a whole-group rereading of our morning message. Then, just before we broke our circle, we looked at the Plan for the Day on the whiteboard, and we recited our monthly Memory Poem together.

Morning Meeting details
Greetings: We had lots of smiles as we greeted each other in different ways during our Morning Meetings. Our favorite greetings were:

• tossing bean bags
• using different voices
• greeting the person to your left and right with “hello, neighbor!”
• closing your eyes and opening them as a classmate says to you “Good morning, ________.”
• greeting in Spanish

To avoid spread illness during flu season, we included some “air” high-five and handshake greetings. In time, I created a deck of cards, on each of which was written a greeting we used. We pulled a card from the deck to select the day’s greeting.

Shares
We started with simple whip shares, during which students would answer, each in turn, a prompt such as “What’s your favorite color?” or “Name one thing you like to do in your spare time.” Then we learned a special sharing format, with audience members asking questions of the sharer. In time, students became eager to sign up on our sharing clipboard. They enjoyed sharing their ideas and being in charge of fielding and responding to questions. They enjoyed asking questions, too. Everyone gained important social skills practice.

Activities
These were a huge hit! Songs and poems are always sure to please, and I included language, reading, and math activities, as well. These helped reinforce academic concepts. We sang songs about taking care of the earth, a little rap about odd and even numbers, and the Wisconsin Milk call-and-response, among others. In May, when we learned about the human body, I introduced more songs to help us learn.

Measuring Morning Meeting effectiveness
I could see changes among the students, and I wanted to measure the Morning Meeting’s impact on student growth. On the very few days we were unable to do a Morning Meeting, they asked why we couldn’t meet in a circle that day. I understood this to mean that they valued the meeting. Students always noticed who was absent from our circle and were glad when their absent classmates returned, but I wanted data. Specifically, I wanted to see how students felt about the climate of our classroom, whether the trust level was actually increasing. So I surveyed the class.

Results
83% of students surveyed indicated in November, just three months into the year, that they trusted classmates more than in September. Only 8% said they had less trust. I believe Morning Meetings have allowed students to get to know each other better, accounting for much of this. Additionally, the group expressed a strong belief that their classmates were kind, and that their teacher liked them. To dig deeper into what students thought about Morning Meeting, I interviewed five students in September and again in November. According to their responses, they students looked forward to Morning Meeting, especially the greetings and the activities. They clearly understood the purpose of the Morning Meetings, which proved to me the importance of direct and transparent explanation of why we do things. I was also very pleased to learn that none of the five students felt sad or mad during the meetings. I did find out, however, that several students felt frustrated when they didn’t finish their morning jobs or when they don’t do work correctly.

Continued community-building
I plan to begin the new school year in a very similar way to last year, I will increase my deck of “greeting cards” and may make one for sharing and activities techniques, too. I look forward to refining the greetings and activities I used last year.

Lynn Kolpack teaches second graders at Woodland School in Barron, Wisconsin.

This article first appeared in Origins: A Newsletter for Elementary Educators, Fall 2011