As teachers we continually strive to find ways to meet all the learners in our classroom. As a first grade teacher I am faced with the challenge to teach all my students to become successful readers that are both fluent and have a high level of comprehension. These students are also expected to become experienced writers that can use the appropriate writing conventions and use good grammar. This appears to be a huge undertaking considering the variety of learners that enter your classroom each year with many different experience levels, not to mention the young immature nature of a child. The English language is already a hard language to teach because there are so many exceptions to the rule and inconsistencies. Many of my students will often ask why does that letter make that sound in this word and a different sound in another. While all the origins of the words in the English language can be explained with knowledge of their etymology, a first grader really doesn't have the capacity to fully understand even though you can explain it in layman's terms. Therefore, I feel that the best way to learn language and develop it would be simply through the constant use and experience of the language. I feel Vygotsky's theory is valid because he believes that a child needs an adult or more competent peer to assist them with learning new vocabulary for concepts. As is the example with a sponge. If a child knows what a sponge is, they may only have a limited range of words to describe it, but the child can expand their vocabulary with an adult's help. The adult can give them the vocabulary for the sponge, such as "that sponge is squishy or wet". Vygotsky believed that while we have the capability to learn things on our own, we still benefit from the influence of others.
I had the experience of working in a school district that used Morning Meetings as part of a Responsive Classroom program. The Response Classroom initiative is based around creating a community of learners. The goal is to promote social, emotional, and academic growth in all students. Therefore the activities and lessons are used to develop the child both as a person and as a learner. In the mornings, we spent twenty minutes following a Morning Meeting that consisted of four parts. One part of our Morning Meetings was a message written by the teacher. The class would read the message aloud together and this message contained consistent language, such as the date and our daily specials for the class. This message was used to teach reading, vocabulary, writing, and spelling. It introduced sight words, gave students opportunities to sound out new words, and gave the students the chance to make corrections to sentences that dealt with writing conventions and grammar. This message gave students the ability to develop their reading and writing skills in language. Another part of the Morning Meeting was the greeting. We began with a greeting that included saying hello in different languages or using a variety of handshakes to say hello. This gave students the opportunity to say hello and good morning to each other in different ways, to hear a variety of greetings expanding their vocabulary. Another part of the morning meeting was the sharing section. Students were able to tell something about themselves, such as a hobby or an interest. The students could also bring in some small trinket or picture to give their classmates a visual representation as they shared. This gave students the opportunity to express themselves through spoken language. It also gave their peers a question time frame where they could ask questions to find out further information about their classmates. Each day about four students shared so that by the end of the week every student had the opportunity to share once. This gave each student an opportunity to share once a week and express themselves verbally to their peers as we begin to learn more and more about our classmates. I thought this was such a successful component to our school day. It really created a very close knit group of students and it helped develop both their spoken and written language abilities in the process.
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Nancy, your explanation of the value of Morning Meeting is great. It brought to mind an experience from my student teaching. I worked in a school that used Saxon Math, a program that focuses on a student-led Math Meeting every morning. Each day a different child walks the group through a series of math-related questions on the classroom math board (it was second grade so we covered things like fact families, counting by fives, weather charts, days in school). It was amazing to see what great practice this was for their math skills but the benefits that stuck out most to me were the verbal communication and social benefits that my students got. Similar to your meetings, a few children were chosen by the student leader each morning to share a problem for the fact families or judge what the weather looked like that day. At the beginning of the year the teacher has to provide a great deal of scaffolding to the leader and the class, but by the end of the year, the students ran the meeting themselves like clockwork! I think each child's confidence grew throughout the year, they were more friendly to each other and I also believe that everyone was more focused and well-behaved throughout the day because they were given a chance to talk and share early in the morning. I think Morning meetings are great and it's interesting to see how so many skills can be incorporated into them. Between you and me, we've already suggested math, reading, self-expression, verbal communication, leadership skills and learning about other cultures. I wish that more of the schools that I work with now were able to dedicate time to things like this. Unfortunately, many of them are stressed by teaching to the test and drilling facts.
Thanks for your post and thanks for reminding me how valuable morning meeting can be!
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