In the middle of the school year a couple of years ago, while having students pass out papers, I was shocked to realize that several of them did not know all their classmates' names. I had assumed that everyone knew everyone! At recess, I saw a related problem: although students were usually polite with each other, they played with the same one or two peers at each unstructured playtime, and there always seemed to be a handful of kids who drifted, disconnected from others.

Toward the end of last year, I became intrigued by the Morning Meetings I saw happening in the second-grade classrooms. I started experimenting a little with some greeting activities and again observed that several children were not confident in using classmates' names.

Last fall, I was ready to use an intentional, structured format for students to learn each other's names. I believed this would increase students' willingness to interact with a greater number of their peers. After all, people are more likely to do things with people they know.

Morning Meeting is just the thing!
I wanted students to use each other's names without hesitation as early in the year as possible. In addition, I wanted students to play with many different students during designated free play. Morning Meeting greetings provide practice learning and using each other's names, and the sharing portion helps students get to know each other. The activity component builds comfort in learning and playing games together, and interacting with their peers.

I used the components of Morning Meeting to explicitly teach student names and to build comfort and familiarity in the classroom community. I emphasized the greeting component to help students become familiar with each other's names, and during the personal share time, students used names when they had questions. During the activity component, we did many activities that use students' names, including Hickety-Pickety Bumblebee and I Sit in the Grass with My Friend. We also created a class book based on Bill Martin Jr.'s Brown Bear, Brown Bear, Who Do You See? Our version has a page for each student, including his or her name, photo, and caption-e.g. "Ms. Barr, Ms. Barr, who do you see? I see ____ looking at me." These captions are followed by a page with the student's name and photo. Students took the book home on a rotating basis.

Structures to reinforce
Outside of Morning Meeting, I completed individual interviews with each student. I asked them about their favorite food, what they are good at, what they want to learn, and what makes them very happy. We then published these interviews as a Guess Who book and, again, circulated the book in students' homes.

These name-learning and community-building activities were aimed at improving recess, as well. To further boost comfort and connection during play time, we practiced several structured group games and learned safe use of the playground equipment, including the slides, monkey bars, climbing structures, balls, and jump ropes.

Measuring change
To help measure how well the name-learning crusade was going, I used an informal assessment that employed individual 4" x 6" photos of each student taken the first day of school. In the second weeks of September, October, and November, I used photo "flash card" sessions to determine exactly how many of the students knew each other's names. I met with students individually and asked them to identify the person pictured.

At the beginning of September and again in mid-November, I also completed a sociogram, a diagram that shows the social links among groups of people, by asking each student to tell me the names of two students he or she would like to play with at recess. In addition, I observed several students at recess and recorded who were their playmates and the activities they engaged in. I used the sociogram and the recess observations to look for indications that the students were developing new friendships as the year progressed.

I saw a definite upward trend in the students' knowledge of their classmates' names. In September, only one student knew all the names, but by mid-November all but four children knew all the names. Similarly, I found that all students were more comfortable playing at recess with a wider variety of people in November than September. The number of those who appeared to be wandering alone was way down by November. It was working!

I plan to continue to use all the components of Morning Meeting on a daily basis. I will tap colleagues for new greetings, activities, and games to emphasize the community of our classroom family. I plan to be more intentional and proactive throughout the year about keeping an eye on the recess interactions, rather than just reacting when kids have problems.

Bonnie Barr teaches first graders at Parkway Elementary School in Glendale, Wisconsin.

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