Blog Post #2: Morning Meeting

This past week in my seminar class for my internship it was my turn to lead the Morning Meeting. The Morning Meeting consists of four components that are outlined in detail in one of our course textbooks,The Morning Meeting Book (Kriete and Davis, 2014). The creators of this book believe that by having a Morning Meeting in your classroom every day it help to build both trust and respect and create connections between you and your students (Kriete and Davis, 2014). It also “merges academic, social, and emotional learning.” (Kriete and Davis, 2014, pg. 11) Each Morning Meeting consists of four parts: the greeting, sharing, a group activity, and a morning message (Kriete and Davis, 2014). There are hundreds of different ideas that can be implemented for any of the four parts but I am going to share with you what I chose to use for my Morning Meeting with my classmates.

The morning message was linked to the greeting. I wrote on the board, “Good Morning Class! The words below all mean ‘Hello’ or ‘Good Morning’ in different languages. Please choose one to use during our greeting.”I then had listed ways to say “hello” or “good morning” in fourteen different languages including French, Mandarin Chinese, and Arabic.

To begin the meeting I asked my eleven classmates and professor to join me in standing in a circle (it could also be done sitting). The greeting worked by turning to the person on your left and saying “good morning” to them using one of the phrases written on the board. The other person then had to say “good morning” back and guess what language their partner used. I thought this was a fun way to open the eyes of my classmates to how different languages can be, especially little known languages like Hmong; that particular greeting was long and unpronounceable!

The sharing activity we did was going around the circle and sharing a short-term and a long-term goal that we were working on achieving. The idea of goals connected to the group activity I selected for the meeting. We played a game called “The Human Knot” that I had participated in several times before at different camps and workshops. Everyone stands shoulder-to-shoulder in a circle and then joins hands with people standing across from them. This creates a tangle of arms that it takes a lot of teamwork and patience to untangle. In fact, I have never actually seen the game played until the end. As with our meeting, most people tend to give up after about ten minutes. However, the point of the activity is that teamwork and collaboration are very important in achieving goals.

The concept of a Morning Meeting is something that was applied in my internship classroom every day for the first few weeks of school and about one to two times a week now that we have begun social studies lessons. I believe that it has been effective in building our classroom community. The students have learned each other’s names, gotten to know one another better, and practiced effectively communicating with each other. It has also allowed both me and my collaborating teacher to learn more about the students. This has helped with classroom management as we figure out how best to group students for collaborative work and has taught students how to behave when it is time to sit on the rug for lessons.

The “Different Languages” greeting (Kriete and Davis, 2014, pg. 74) I utilized in the meeting for my classmates is one I would like to try with my students, especially since so many of my students come from diverse backgrounds. I believe that would have fun learning words from another language but that it would also open their eyes to diversity of which they are not yet aware. I would not use my “Human Knot” game with my primary-grade students but instead choose another, simpler activity to promote teamwork.

Addresses FEAPS 2 d, e, and f

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