Grade 4 Morning Meeting

Before young students can fully grasp the concept of civil discourse, they must learn the Core Skills that lay the foundation upon which civil discourse can be built. For many Lower School students, this begins with Morning Meeting.

In fourth grade, the Morning Meeting is an established routine, and the students can count on beginning their school day in the same way every day. Under the Responsive Classroom (RC) model, there are four primary components of the Morning Meeting, each of which are aimed at increasing a student’s sense of belonging, significance, and fun: a Greeting, Sharing, an Activity, and a Morning Message.

Grade 4 teacher Whitney Earhart shares, “Throughout Morning Meeting, children are practicing active listening, waiting their turn, and respecting others. Although it takes a lot of time to plan a different meeting for each day, the sense of community this practice creates is invaluable. If students feel heard and valued, they are more likely to engage in academic activities, to take risks, and to collaborate with their classmates.”

Every child being acknowledged and spoken to at the outset of the day is a tenet of Responsive Classroom, an approach that many Lower and Middle School teachers employ in their classrooms. RC encourages frequent reminders about the expectations of the Morning Meeting process, such as how to practice being a considerate audience and how to project and share so that everyone can benefit from one another’s contributions. “When contributing to one’s community experience is a consistent expectation,” says Grade 4 teacher Sarah Bryant, “there’s an inherent sense of security. Within this framework, students feel as though they belong to a learning community and that they are valued by its members. Thus, the need to prove oneself gives way to more open communication and connection.”

To begin, students are welcomed each day with a message about the day ahead. Sometimes, there is an interactive element to the message, possibly incorporating academic content or fun trivia about the students’ own lives. Then, during the greeting, every child is greeted by name. They are encouraged to make eye contact with one another and speak audibly. Sample greetings include: shoe greeting (single shoes in a pile and each person picks a shoe then greets its owner), middle name greeting (pick a name from a hat and guess whose middle name it is, then greet that person), world language greetings, ankle shakes, “micro” waves, and using silly voices. from all the uncertainty. The greetings and activities, however silly, were a reminder of ‘normal.’ Students couldn’t wait to share their latest updates with the group. With connection being so elusive, having these procedures and expectations in place was a saving grace during spring remote learning. Several parents reported that it was their children’s favorite part of the week. While there was plenty of instruction happening beyond those meetings, they were our weekly reminders that we were all in it together. Still a team, even if we were apart.”

New COVID precautions on campus have required a shift in some of the standard Morning Meeting procedures, but teachers During sharing, students may be given a topic about which to have improvised quite a bit, modifying old favorites to fit the new share with a partner or the whole class. The topics vary from needs. “At the beginning of the year, I was very concerned about favorite restaurants and hobbies to not having the space in my classroom I was family traditions and study methods, used to for my meetings,” says Earhart. “We or questions such as “Would you “If students feel used to sit in a circle on a rug. With the new rather” and “If you were to open a store, what would you sell?” Sharing heard and valued, arrangement of the desks, we no longer have the space for that. Most days, our meetings provides an invaluable opportunity they are more are conducted standing in a large circle for faculty to learn about their students and for students to learn likely to engage around the perimeter of the room. We were also very concerned about the amount about each other. As Grade 4 teacher Karin Prentice notes, “We practice in academic of touching involved in our traditional greetings and activities and substituted the skills of making eye contact, activities, to verbal greetings for many of the physical listening to others, and learning that it’s okay to put yourself out there take risks, and to ones. Now, we are slowly bringing some of our old favorites back in with lots of hand and share something personal about collaborate with sanitizer before and after!” yourself. They learn about accepting and even admiring the similarities their classmates.” What might appear to be simple fun and and differences of our peers relative games to a casual outside observer is to people’s personal experience and/ Whitney Earhart, Grade 4 Teacher actually a very intentional approach to or views of the world.” building social skills and teaching the most basic tenets of interpersonal relationships. The Morning The activity closes out the morning meeting and transitions Meeting helps create bonds between students based on shared to the business of the day. Activities, such as Four Corners experiences and fosters communication, understanding, and and Follow the Leader, are geared toward building common respect. “Morning Meeting is a daily foundational practice, and experiences. As trust within the classroom communities the skills taught are reinforced throughout every class, every grows throughout the year, teachers are able to select activities day. ‘When it’s not your turn to talk, it is your turn to listen’ is that may not have been as successful early in the fall, and the very commonly heard in my classes,” says Bryant. “We discuss faculty often participate alongside the students. what respect looks like and sounds like in various scenarios, knowing that even our youngest students must practice open When the pandemic forced classes to go remote last spring, the dialogue and civil discourse if we expect them to engage in such Morning Meeting played an essential role in keeping students practices as adults.” and faculty connected. Bryant shares, “When COVID upended our spring plans, we felt our weekly class time on Zoom was Tiffany Townsend best spent in a Morning Meeting. During a time when children Director of Marketing & Communications were not seeing their friends, our Zoom meetings were a retreat