PNA employs the Responsive Classroom approach for social and emotional learning in our classrooms. A foundation of this approach is the daily morning meeting.
“Morning Meeting is an engaging way to start each day, build a strong sense of community, and set children up for success socially and academically. ”
-Responsive Classroom.org
The morning message is one of the four main components of morning meeting. Every day, students read and interact with a short message written by the teacher. After reading the message, the students respond on the whiteboard.
The message always follows a friendly letter format, but the content varies day by day. In this example, there is room for creativity as well as the expectation that students apply the lessons they have been learning about sentences – proper structure and identification.
In another example, students are asked to produce two different fractions. This is a great formative assessment piece as it is easy to identify who has an understanding of basic fractions, as well as those who do a careful reading of the text (some students only read the first part and neglect to write two fractions as indicated).
At PNA, we strive to give students not only a voice but many opportunities to let those voices be heard. By answering questions such as the one above, students are not only revisiting new vocabulary and concepts, but they are able to state their opinion and respectfully disagree with the opinions of others.
In just a few simple sentences, morning messages welcome students and convey a sense of belonging, remind students key ideas they’ve been studying or will start to study, and add a challenge that gets their brains warmed up and ready to start the day.