I have always had what I considered to be an encouraging, active Morning Meeting in my kindergarten classes. This past year, I learned how to use Morning Meeting to create a positive classroom climate that supports all students, even those most hesitant in their participation.

I began by paying special attention to my quieter students, noting three in particular-Mallory, Aaron, and David-who were so shy that, in the beginning, they rarely participated in Morning Meeting, let alone any other class discussions. The lack of engagement of these quiet students would likely negatively affect their academic scores. With these students in mind, I helped the students create a strong and safe community through clear rules, routines, and expectations. Such a community would allow everyone to feel comfortable enough to participate and grow academically.

Clear rules, routines, expectations
Taking care to establish clear rules, routines, and expectations in my introduction of Morning Meeting enabled my students to gain confidence in the classroom. I planned every Morning Meeting for the first three weeks of school, including the greeting, activity, and game for each day. During the first few weeks of class, I modeled every facet of Morning Meeting and carefully guided the introduction of additional routines. To support and protect our community, we established our classroom rules as a group. I used reinforcing language to encourage, and reminding and redirecting language to head off and correct problems. I focused on the clear expectations supported by the routines to ensure that we followed our new classroom rules.

One particular challenge was teaching the more vocal students the skill of taking turns during discussion. This process was far more difficult than encouraging the reserved students to voice their opinions! I had to consistently enforce our guidelines for raising hands, waiting turns, and not speaking while others were speaking. With these procedures and understandings in place, I began to measure the participation of all students (not just the loquacious ones).

Growing confidence, improving scores
To track their improvements, I interviewed, took notes on, and tallied responses for all three of the more reserved students on three separate occasions-once in September, another time in October, and again in November. I was ecstatic to note an uptick in participation and corresponding improvement in academic skills!

All three students were quiet and shy during the first three weeks of class, but I noticed big changes over the fall. Aaron became more willing to follow along and participate in Morning Meeting. David was still not raising his hand as much as I would have liked, but he was becoming a deep thinker, and the points he made when he did participate were always extraordinary; I simply needed to be sure to give him more time to process. Mallory remained quiet, but when she participated and spoke she was able to do so with more confidence.

All three students progressed academically, as well. For example, Mallory, who had come in with a strong scholastic head start, showed considerable improvement in her vocabulary comprehension. She came in able to read and identify twelve of our vocabulary-building words in September; by November she was able to read and identify 32! Similarly, Aaron, an ESL student, made large gains in learning. He came in knowing nine upper-case letters, six lower-case letters, and five letter sounds. In November, Aaron had raised those totals to 24, 20, and 20, respectively.

Balancing participation
By rigorously guarding the routines of our Morning Meeting, I was able to make room for both the talkative and quieter students to get closer to my goals for them. Talkative students became calmer and more respectful throughout the fall, and the quiet students asserted themselves much more often in class. This balanced participation transferred to greater focus during our language-arts time, which follows Morning Meeting.

Over time, a number of parents sought me out to tell me how much their kids had matured. These guardians credited me for their children's more polite and respectful behavior at home. I, in turn, credit the social skill-building capacity of a carefully crafted and maintained Morning Meeting.

Laura Halloran teaches kindergartners at Eden Lake Elementary School in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

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