The Peter Greer grade 5/6 learning community led by Matt, Clint, and Nicky engage their students in a morning meeting each day with roughly 75 students to build belonging, cohesion, and understanding across their community. The trio uses a Google Doc to organize their many thoughts and creates an ongoing Google Slides presentation to communicate various items related to the day including the agenda, announcements, current events, and much more. These three educators had seen the benefits of students taking ownership of their learning before but it wasn’t until a student asked if he could run morning meeting that ownership in the learning community went to the next level. Before they knew it students were volunteering to lead morning meeting in pairs and were granted edit access to the slidedeck so they could add material whenever and wherever they chose. Now students are at the core of all aspects of morning meeting from the construction of the agenda, selection of material, and sharing of resources. If you were standing outside the classroom before the morning bell rang you would routinely see students previewing the morning’s slidedeck on their personal devices and even adding their own items they wanted to bring to the attention of their classmates. Students grew so connected to the student owned morning meeting structure that they would share their learning while they were away on family vacations or other opportunities that pulled them away from the classroom.
This is a copy of one morning meeting Google slidedeck from this past September which provides a glimpse into this powerful integration of technology to build community.
The morning meeting has quickly become the nucleus of this learning community. It has brought a group of students and their teachers together in a way that sets the tone for the day, allows each student to have a voice, and develops empathy as students are given the opportunity to share their strengths and experiences. It is remarkable how a simple structure that was originally created to share information to a large group has emerged as a great example of how multiple OECD principles like putting learners at the centre, making learning social, attending to emotions, and ensuring individual differences are recognized and celebrated can be cultivated simultaneously. When asked what their next steps were for the structure of morning meeting there was complete consensus from the community’s teachers that it will continue to evolve in whatever direction the students take it!
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