Morning Meeting Reflection

A morning meeting is a series of activities that typically occur right as the school day is

starting. The sequence of a morning meeting is greeting, sharing, a group activity, and a

morning message which is written by the teacher and typically is related to what is happening

that day. Morning meetings are done to help everyone in the class feel seen and heard. They

also help eliminate behavioral issues throughout the entire school day because students are

given an opportunity to talk and have fun with their classmates during this time.

In Ms. G’s class, she began the morning meeting by calling each table to the circle. The

student’s chose the greeting for this day. They all greeted each other by singing “1, 2, 3, 4,

c’mon (classmate’s name) hit the floor. We’re so glad you’re here today. Hooray, hooray,

hooray!” As each student “hit the floor” they did a dance move/action of their own choice. This

gave everyone time to felt seen. During the transition from greeting to share, Ms. G said, “Let’s

show everyone how we sit in control on our bottoms.” All the students sat down where they

were, ready for the next activity. For share, Ms. G gave the students the choice to share how

they feel or talk about anything else they wanted. Directly from share, the class went over the

morning message. Ms. G purposely wrote the wrong year on the morning message as an

opportunity for the students to correct an error. This was done on St. Patrick’s Day so the

morning message asked “Why/when do you feel lucky” which was another opportunity for the

students to share as a class. Ms. G then had the students turn to their neighbors and share why

they feel lucky. She used a clapping attention grabber to transition the students into the group

activity. For the group activity, the students called out verbs and the rest of the class had to act

out the verb. Not everything called out was particularly a verb, but they still enjoyed acting out
the word (i.e. Dinosaur). After the group activity, Ms. G release the students to freely return to

their seats. Throughout the morning meeting, Ms. G used quite a few behavioral management

tactics. When students were out of line during the greeting, she used nonverbal cues to move

them back. She frequently pointed out model behavior in students, asked students to recall

expectations, and had the students finish her sentences when she was reminding them of

expectations. She also continuously reminded the students about being “in control” and

pointed out when she saw students who were “in control”.

When we performed a morning meeting, the students were able to get to know one

another better than they would have during the school day. They were able to share things

about themselves and learn things about each other which helped with social and

communicative skills. Our desired results were achieved for the most part, due to explicit

directions and expectations. Our attention grabber was used if we noticed that something

needed clarification so that our students were able to go through the activities successfully. For

the spiderweb greeting activity, I think our desired results were not met as well as they could

have been, due to the size of our groups. Some people were absent, so the groups were even

smaller than we planned for, and they couldn’t fully make something that resembled a

spiderweb. We planned these activities to be done in a classroom of 3 rd-5th graders but

executed our morning meeting in a college classroom. I think the developmental level of college

students allowed them to figure out what they needed to do if our instructions weren’t as clear

as they should have been but in a 3rd-5th grade classroom, even more explanation might have

been necessary, especially during the spiderweb greeting activity.

 By observing and performing this routine, I learned how important a morning meeting is

in a classroom. I also learned how to successfully manage a class of people by having people

move around the room safely, use attention grabbers, and communicate expectations and

directions. I learned that no matter how in depth you think the directions should be, there will

still be questions and the need for further clarification. Overall, I think our morning meeting

went well. For the greeting activity, we should have made the groups bigger but small group

greetings and having assigned groups in general went well. During the sharing portion of our

morning meeting, we had two groups pick names of their partners from a name jar. I think this

went well and we were able to help people whose partners were absent to find someone else

to work with. When we did the group activity, one of the prompts was to find people who were

born in the same month as you. This worked for the most part, but 2-3 students did not have

anyone else who was born in their month, and they shared that they felt left out. The last thing

we want during a morning meeting is for students to not feel included so next time I think it is

just important to find a prompt where everyone will be able to find a partner. Another solution

to this issue would be to draw a star on the whiteboard at the beginning of the activity and

explain that if a student cannot find a classmate with the same answer as them, they could

come to the board and be the “star” of the class. The next time I perform a morning meeting, I

will make sure to go even more in depth when explaining directions and look at the activity

from every angle to make sure that any issue can be clarified before it arises. I will also make

sure that everyone will be included during all parts of the meeting. Overall, I think our morning

meeting went well and I am excited to enact this routine again in a future classroom!