Using Morning Meetings to Build Classroom Community

Morning meetings are commonly used within elementary classrooms as a means to build and strengthen classroom communities. Grounded in constructivist theory, this study aims to determine if morning meetings impact elementary students’ feelings about their classroom community. To do this, surveys were administered to 19 third-grade students before and after they participated in morning meetings for a week. Responses from the surveys were coded and a t-test was conducted to determine if differences between the pre-survey and post-survey responses were statistically significant. Results from the analysis of the data indicate that morning meetings do impact a students’ sense of safety within their classroom community, but that other components of the classroom community, such as a sense of belonging, are not impacted by morning meetings. Therefore, it is important that teachers do not rely solely on morning meetings to build their classroom communities. Instead, the values of classroom communities must be present within the classroom throughout every aspect of the school day.