Building a Classroom Community: Morning Meetings

Morning meetings are a great way to build a great classroom community. I have seen morning meetings done in a classroom and was able to see much success. There are many ways to do morning meetings. I appreciated the guest speakers that came to class to talk about their success with morning meetings. One thing I really enjoyed about one of the guest speakers was something she said. It really hit me and made me want to use morning meetings in my classroom because of the truthfulness of the statement. She said something along the lines of, “Morning meetings are the only time throughout the day where 100% of your students will be successful. Other areas of the curriculum you are going to have struggling students, every area of curriculum, but morning meetings make it possible for all your students to be successful in something.” If I can have a time in my class where every student can be successful, why would I give up that opportunity.

Some may think morning meetings are a waste of precious time since there is so much to do in a day, but I think morning meetings are an addition of a way to enrich every aspect of the class, students learning, and students feeling accepted. As students feel a sense of a successful and uplifting classroom community, they will excel in every aspect of their education.

I want to create an environment where my students can feel welcome, safe, successful, and be able to express their identity. Morning meetings create and allow all of these things to happen. To implement morning meetings into my classroom, I want to create a morning meetings binder with different sections of the morning meeting in it. Within each section, I will have a variety of items. Each week, one of the classroom jobs will be to choose the morning meeting greeting and activity for each day. In the greetings section I will have games, chants, and various greetings for students to choose from to greet each other. Then I will have a section for activities with a variety of activities and games. For my share, I want to have a theme for each day of the week. On Mondays, students will tell about their weekend. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, students will let their classmates know they are awesome, special, amazing, and terrific. Thursdays will be Thankful Thursday where students will share what they are thankful for. Fridays will be Praises and Pride where students will praise one of their classmates by praising them for something they saw their classmate do previously in the week. The pride portion will be the students sharing one thing they did well during that week at school. Not at home, but at school. News and announcements will change each day based upon what is needed.

I think the share will be one of the most valuable parts of my morning meetings because this is where my students will gain a sense of identity, trust, belonging, and care. They will feel this for themselves, but also for those around them. I truly believe that if they feel these positive attributes within the classroom, they will be much more successful than if we were to spend that half hour on general instruction. Curriculum matters, but caring matters much more!

Differentiating Product

Differentiating Product:

• Students have some choice in how they will demonstrate what they learned to the teacher. 
• Give different assignments to different students to create interest.
• Use tiered products
• Allow independent study
• Encourage a product that challenges existing ideas and produce "new" ideas.
• Encourage the development of products that use new techniques, materials, and forms. 

Differentiating Process

Differentiating Process:

• How students go about making sense of what they learned.
• Use of diverse activities varied to meet students interest or preferences for learning
• For exploring history students could have various options such as:
• Conduct internet and text research
• or Create a physical model and report to explain it.
• or Live interviews.
• Use many different learning styles when coming up with assignments and projects
• Tiered Activities
• Give students choice of work arrangement. (Alone, partner, small group etc.)

Differentiating Content

Differentiating Content:

Differentiating content is differentiating what the students learn.
Content can be differentiated by providing materials at varied ability or grade levels in one classroom.
Reading materials that address course content below and above grade levels are common ways to differentiate content.
Use varied texts and resources.

Differentiating for Learning Profile

Learning profile refers to a students preferred mode of learning. Gender, culture,learning style,etc all shape the learning profile. Some students work best on their own, some work best collaborating with others. Some students are visual, some are analytic. Each student has a different learning profile. Learning profile factors can impede or aid a student's progress. A teacher needs to provide ways of learning that make the learning journey of each student more efficient and effective.

Ways to differentiate for learning profile:

• Environment: Temperature, activity level, amount of light
• Cultural Influence: Relaxed/structured, reserved/expressive, personal/impersonal
• Visual: Overheads, pictures, notes, maps, diagrams
• Auditory: Lectures, read aloud, music
• Kinesthetic: Move around, hands on, types or highlights during lectures.

Differentiating for Interest

Interest is a major motivating factor for learning. When a teacher links required content to student interests, they are able to hook the learner. The learner will find the information intriguing to learn and will pursue knowledge. Effective teachers also allow students to pursue their interests and passions beyond the prescribed curriculum by offering independent investigations. Good teachers also help students develop new interests and things to be excited about in the curriculum.

Ways to differentiate for interest:

• Use jigsaw
• Connect curriculum to real life
• Use technology
• Build a model or display
• Don't be so restrictive with investigations
• Allow different options to choose from for the same assignment
• Discuss interesting topics

Differentiating for Readiness

Readiness has to do with the student's current preparedness for a specific topic. It includes their knowledge, understanding, and skill. The work cannot be too easy or too hard. If the work is too easy, the students may get a good grade, but they will not be learning. If the work is too hard, they will get frustrated and not try. The students need to be stretched, but not frustrated. Differentiating for Readiness also offers support.

Ways to differentiate for readiness:

• Use various books on the same topic
• Giving the option for an extension activity
• Giving leveled homework assignments
• Helping students go from: 
• dependent to independent
• slow moving to fast
• structured to unstructured
• simple to complex
• concrete to abstract