Discussion plays an essential role in my upper elementary morning meetings. While my morning meetings are teacher-guided, students construct meaning and develop big ideas through the discussions we have. During read alouds, reflections, and a phase where students respond to three questions specifically designed for whole group discussions, we have lots of opportunities to gather together and share our insights during our morning meeting units. While the typical mode of whole group instruction often works well and builds a strong classroom community, you may want to change up your discussion methods from time to time, especially if you are struggling with apathy, boredom, or students who regularly do not vocalize their participation. No worries! I’m hear to help you mix it up!

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Discussion is one of the 5 phases of my morning meeting units. Each unit is based on a social-emotional theme that we learn about for 2-3 weeks—themes like Growth Mindset, Belonging, Kindness, Compassion, Perseverance, Friendship, Managing our Emotions, etc. During the discussion phase, students complete a 4 quadrant response sheet that has three questions and a space for an illustration related to the topic. Within the discussion questions, I ask students to think about themselves, think about others, and brainstorm strategies.

WHY MIX UP YOUR DISCUSSION STRATEGIES

It can be easy to find yourself doing more of the talking than you’d like during morning meetings. Using a variety of discussion strategies serves multiple purposes for me, and I want to share them so you can consider all of the reasons you may want to find ways to mix up your discussion time!

Discussion strategies create a setting where all of my students can be more active participants in the learning process. We all have students who are eager to share their ideas and insights, but we don’t want to leave behind those students who are more quiet or passive in their learning. These strategies create ways for students to share with a partner or small group of students where they have the opportunity to be more vocal.
These strategies can help all students feel welcome, heard, valuable, and safe to take risks, helping you to build and maintain a stronger classroom community. In order to cultivate that environment, all students must feel that their ideas are valued and that their voice is sought after. Having different strategies in place for collaborative discussion is a way to create positive interactions between students.
Students can learn to “hear” from perspectives other than their own! When students consider how others may feel in response to discussion questions, those “others” are actually in the room with them and they can learn from one another!
I do less talking and more listening when we use any of these strategies! 💞

It’s important to note that I use a lot of journaling and response sheets during my morning meetings. Many of the discussions we have will center on students’ responses—allowing them quiet time to get their thoughts together is an important way to ensure the success of your meetings and improve the quality of ideas that students share. Don’t forget to allow “think time” for those students who really need a chance to put their thoughts together!

TURN AND TALK

Turn and talk is one of the easiest ways to get all students involved in the discussion and share ideas. Having class discussions where students are called on either at random or when they have a hand raised takes a lot of precious time away from your lesson. It can be easy to lose students’ attention from the focus of the discussion when everyone is just listening to one student share their thoughts. Turn and talk is super quick, holds students accountable to their peers because they have to contribute to the conversation, and gives everyone a chance to share their thoughts. When you use this strategy throughout the day, students begin to expect it (which often results in them paying attention more because they anticipate having to turn and share their thoughts with a partner ;)) and it quickly becomes a well-oiled machine.

SMALL GROUPS CREATE ANCHOR CHART/GROUP RESPONSES

Giving students frequent opportunities throughout the year to work within a small group setting is so valuable. You can capitalize on morning meeting topics that are multi-faceted by assigning different aspects of the topic to small groups to create anchor charts. After sharing the anchor charts in whole group, the charts can be hung in the classroom and referred to throughout the entire unit. For example, in my belonging unit one of the key vocabulary terms we discuss is “exclusion”. One group could create a Frayer model defining exclusion (with synonyms, antonyms, a definition, and sentence or example), another group may be tasked with creating a list of behaviors that exclude others, and a third group drafts strategies for responding to exclusionary behaviors.

Making two posters for each topic doubles the number of small groups AND gives students an interesting reason to listen during share time—to see what different ideas the other group came up with. With this strategy, students get the opportunity to collaborate in a small group setting and an opportunity to present and explain information to the rest of the class. (This strategy can even be turned into a gallery walk—read on!)

GALLERY WALKS

Students LOVE gallery walks! They give everyone a chance to get up out of their seats and move around the classroom. To prep for a gallery walk, write three to five discussion questions on chart paper and post the questions around the classroom. Divide students into small groups and send each group to to one of the discussion questions. After having a few minutes to discuss and record their responses, thoughts, or questions, groups rotate, read other students’ responses, and add new ideas. The gallery walk ends with groups returning to their initial discussion question, working together to synthesize all of the responses and reporting to the class.

Gallery walks are a great informal assessment tool for teachers because they provide a snapshot of student understanding. Teachers can quickly see areas they may need to clarify or focus more on in subsequent lessons. Gallery walks during morning meetings may help students begin to see connections and develop those big ideas about the theme—a BIG goal of my morning meeting time!

TAKE A STANCE

“Take a stance” is a creative way to get students thinking about a new theme or topic on a bit of a deeper level. “Take a Stance” requires everyone to formulate an opinion to a question or statement the teacher poses and be prepared to support their thinking. For example, when focusing on the concept of belonging, the teacher may post the quotation from Brene Brown, “Those who have a strong sense of belonging have the courage to be imperfect.” The teacher then asks students to stand in one of the four designated areas around the room that represent “strongly agree,” “agree,” disagree,” and “strongly disagree.” Each group discusses why they took that stance. After each group has a chance to collaborate on their reasons, they share with the whole group. This strategy also works well when asking students to self-reflect and rate themselves on some sort of a continuum (i.e. “How good am I at helping others feel they belong?”) at the launch of a new theme—if you use take a stance, be sure to do it again later in your unit so that students can see how their ideas and feelings have changed!

CONVER-STATIONS

An idea from Sarah Brown Wessling, CONVER-STATIONS not only gets your students moving, but also exposes them to multiple students’ thoughts, encourages deeper levels of discussion, and allows their ideas to change and grow in a short amount of time. In CONVER-STATIONS, you divide the class into discussion groups of 4-6 students. Prompt each group to discuss the same question. After an adequate amount of time, one or two students from each group rotates to a new group where they begin discussing a different, but related question. (This can be easily organized by assigning numbers in the small groups and having numbers 1-2 be the “movers”.)

I personally love using this strategy when we are closing out a theme unit and starting to pull our big ideas together. For example, after we have read several growth mindset themed picture books during our growth mindset unit, I split my class into five groups and ask the small groups to discuss

How were the read alouds similar/different?
What similarities/differences can you find in the characters?
Discuss what you think the author’s message is for each text.
Which of our growth mindset quotations fits best with each story? Why?

I love rotating through the groups and hearing how students are integrating everything they have learned about the topic. This is a great strategy to use if your students gravitate towards the same peers for turn and talk or other discussion opportunities because the combination of students mixes up with each discussion round!

This strategy can be combined with any of the above poster strategies as well! Or you could have one student in the group be a recorder who jots down notes from the discussion.

I don’t know about you, but thinking about all of the powerful discussions that can result from mixing these strategies into my morning meeting units makes me excited for the year to progress!

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YOU CAN GRAB ALL OF THE RESOURCES FOR THE BELONGING UNIT MENTIONED HERE!

This free theme unit is packed with lesson ideas, student journal pages, discussion prompts, self-reflections, bulletin board materials, and more! YES! Everything for the belonging theme is FREE to email subscribers! It even includes 15 days of editable lesson plans, teacher Google Slides, and student notebooks in Google Slides! Be sure to subscribe to get your teaching resources.

THE THEME-BASED MORNING MEETING FRAMEWORK

My morning meeting routine is based on themes in literature. My morning meetings are a routine classroom experience that allows students the opportunity to develop personally, academically, and socially through the use of self-reflection, read alouds, songs, videos, quotations, key vocabulary, classroom discussions, and the teacher as a trusted guide.

Each element of the framework works to create a theme-study while at the same time teaching social-emotional skills, character education, and strengthening the classroom community. The 5 phases of the framework include:

Exposure/Launching the Theme (without coming right out and telling students what the theme is)
Introducing the Theme, Self-Reflection, and Goal Setting
Student Discussion
Building the Theme
Consolidating Learning, Reflecting, and Creating Closure

Resources for each of these components are included in the theme units.

SHOP MORNING MEETING RESOURCES:

If you’d like themes to guide your morning meetings all year, you may be interested in the Morning Meeting Mega Bundle of 17 theme units. With units focused on kindness, compassion, growth mindset, gratitude, perseverance, responsibility, managing emotions, and so much more, your engaging morning meeting plans are done for you and your students will love them! You can save 10% on the Mega Bundle of all 17 themes with the code MM10.