The 4 parts to a Responsive Classroom™ Morning Meeting play an important role in the academic and social learning for students PreK-5. A Responsive Classroom™ Morning Meeting is an engaging and intentional way to build a strong sense of self and classroom community while setting the stage for academic and social success.

The format for a Responsive Classroom™ Morning Meeting allows teachers and students to come together in a circle for 20-30 minutes each morning as a way to start the day interacting and communicating with each other during these 4 parts:

GREETING

Students and teachers greet each other by name. At the beginning of the year the class may start out with simple, low emotional risk greetings. With younger students the teacher may do the introducing the first couple days of school. As the community gains trust, greetings can become more involved and higher emotional risk.

SHARING

Students share information about important events in their lives. Listeners often offer empathetic comments or ask clarifying questions. Again, at the beginning of the year start slow with opportunities to ease into sharing. I suggest creating a type of sharing for each day of the week to provide a predictable structure for students to rely on, as well as ease for teacher planning.

Monday=Weekend review
Tuesday=Quick share question around the circle
Wednesday=Would You Rather Prompt
Thursday=2-3 person share (building up to questions and comments from the class)
Friday=Hullabaloo

GROUP ACTIVITY

Everyone participates in a brief, engaging activity that promotes group cohesion. The Activity time allows students to practice social and academic skills that you are working on. (for example, a game, reciting a poem, dancing, or singing).

Scaffold the activities at the beginning of the year, depending on age and number of steps/rules. The idea is to create a space where everyone can learn to step out of their comfort zone, so starting slow and simple to build trust is key! If you don’t you may risk some students not feeling secure or that they can be vulnerable in the group if asked to do something uncomfortable too fast.

Go slow to go fast.

MORNING MESSAGE

Students read and interact with a short message written by their teacher. The message is crafted to help students focus on the work they’ll do in school that day. You can have a quick question for students to answer that is part of your morning entrance routine. This can then be discussed when the morning message is read together.

The morning message is a great place to embed literacy concepts that you are learning to practice while reading the message. For example, if the letter of the day for kindergarten is Gg, I am going to write words that have Gg for us us identify and circle. I can then have the group count the number of Gg letters circled.

4 parts to a Responsive Classroom™ Morning Meeting

RESPONSIVE CLASSROOM TO FIDELITY

Responsive Classroom™ Morning Meeting has these 4 parts in this order with nothing else added. If you’re already doing a Responsive Classroom™ Morning Meeting, then this will be a review or reminder.

The goals* of a Responsive Classroom Morning Meeting are to:

1. To set the tone for respectful and engaged learning in a climate of trust

2. To create the positive power of community by fulfilling students’ need to belong, to feel significant, and to have fun

3. To model and practice social and emotional skills

4. To merge social, emotional, and academic learning

Adding calendar and math lessons during that time extends morning meeting time significantly and takes away from the purpose of the meeting. Learners are easily disengaged due to sitting for so long before the day has even started.

I suggest creating simple calendar routines that can be placed as a warm-up to the start of your math block as they are more closely aligned. Some years I even did calendar as a transition before lunch/recess.

The return on investment to have morning meeting without calendar far outweighs a long meeting with calendar. How would it feel to start the day with engaged students feeling good about themselves and their class?

(*source: https://www.responsiveclassroom.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Engaging-Academics-in-Morning-Meeting.pdf)

Intentional planning for morning meeting is key to keep students engaged

PLANNING FOR RESPONSIVE CLASSROOM MORNING MEETING

Even though the structure to a Responsive Classroom™ Morning Meeting is simple, planning time for teachers is already stretched thin. Intentional planning for your morning meeting makes a difference in keeping students engaged and participating.

I created a morning meeting planning system for myself that gave me back 30-60 minutes each week. If you’d like to check it out with some ideas for each of the 4 parts, I have it in my TPT store: Responsive Classroom™ Morning Meeting Ideas

For kindergarten or first grade teachers and classrooms that are looking for already planned high quality morning meeting lessons, I have a growing bundle of monthly done for you morning meeting plans (4 weeks each month) that you can use as google slides or print out. I’ve scaffolded the risk levels and activities to build trust and extending beyond comfort zones.