Classroom Meetings
by Judith Gold

Classroom meetings provide arenas for children to express their ideas and to hear and respond to the ideas of others. Meetings are places where children gain the confidence to articulate their thoughts, ideas, and feelings. They help children learn about each other and about what it means to work in and be part of a group. Children come to understand that being part of a group means accepting and appreciating a diversity of approaches.

Meetings give children opportunities to share strengths that are not always visible elsewhere in the classroom. By having classroom meetings, teachers give children powerful messages: I care about your opinions; you are people with ideas; what you think about and how you respond to what we are doing helps to shape our curriculum and our classroom life.

Meetings are the organizational vehicles for the study. The teacher writes a message each day telling the children what the meeting will be about. To facilitate discussion, the message is open-ended, which allows a variety of responses. The message gives children a chance to begin thinking about the ideas that the class will later discuss in the meeting. If there is one right response to a meeting message, the meeting could be over very quickly.

There are lots of ways to help children prepare for a meeting. For example, some teachers

• Give children the message the night before and have them write down their ideas and bring them to the meeting 
• Allow children to work with a partner to make a list of possible responses to the message 
• When appropriate, encourage children to look through books for ideas 
• Have children share with a partner the homework that will be discussed at the meeting 

It is helpful to give children a chance to touch base with each other before a meeting starts. This enables them to socialize, an important developmental need.

Examples of Meeting Messages

• “Yesterday you noticed that the color of the Allegheny River outside of Pittsburgh is different from its color in the city. Today we will talk about why the colors are different.”
• “Tomorrow we are going to River Rescue. To prepare for our trip, let’s think about the kind of work people might do there, what they need to know to do the job, and how they might learn how to do their jobs.”
• “Let’s think about ways we can use the stream table to answer some of our questions about how rivers are formed.”

There are many different kinds of meetings that classes have during the course of a study.

Examples of types of meetings:

• Meetings to find out what children already know about the topic. Teachers usually start a study by asking children what they know. This helps the teacher decide what to include in the study and validates for the children the importance of their prior knowledge.
  
• Meetings to explore children’s questions about the topic. This kind of meeting gives teachers additional insights into the children’s interests and lets the children take part in formulating the direction the study will take.
  
• Hypothesizing meetings. Children are given some information and asked to speculate about what this information may mean.
  
• Pre-trip meetings. Before a trip, children speculate about what they think they will see.
  
• Post-trip meetings. Children describe what they have seen, which helps them to process what they have learned. This allows them to hear from each other and gives the teacher important information to help with the assessment of what the children have integrated from the experience.
  
• Project planning meetings. This type of meeting helps children to think about how they will get organized to accomplish their work. Participation in the planning makes them more responsible for the outcomes.
  
• Meetings to extend thinking. Children are encouraged to build on the information they have acquired.
  
• Reflection meetings. Upon completion of a study or an important experience, reflection meetings help children to assess the experience. Teachers often have reflection meetings in the middle of a project — such as doing research or making models or murals — to give children time to think about and solve some of the problems they may be having.

Management Strategies

Teachers choose meeting times when they know that the class will be able to sit still and stay focused. The meeting time is not necessarily the same each day. In the beginning of the year, meetings usually last twenty minutes. As children become more experienced with meetings, they often go on for thirty minutes.

Children need to know the rules of the meeting. It helps if they are part of the process of establishing these rules. Some teachers choose to assign meeting seats so that children won’t have to be concerned about where their friends are sitting. Meeting seats are not permanent; they can change periodically.

The Role of the Leader

While leading discussions, teachers have many concerns to balance; they must listen hard to understand what each child is saying, while paying attention to behavior issues and thinking about how much they should say.

At first it is often difficult to resist giving children the answers. It helps to ask the children how they think they could find out the answer to a particular question. The teacher has to decide when to push an individual child, as well as when to leave things alone, when to redirect children, how far to take the meeting, and what questions can be left unanswered.

A question that often comes up when teachers are writing down what children say is what to do about misinformation. Some teachers keep a chart of questions to research; others title the chart “Our Ideas” or “Our Hypotheses,” listing the questions at hand.

As the leader of the meeting, the teacher models, with her language and responses, the process of struggling with ideas in order to solve problems. The teacher models how to listen to people, ways of responding, and how to disagree respectfully.

It is the teacher’s responsibility to pull together the many ideas that have been expressed at the meeting and to help children make meaningful connections. Having effective meetings comes with practice and experience.

About the Author

Judith Gold, M.S., M.Ed, has worked extensively with teachers to develop integrated social studies curriculum. She is currently the Project Director of LEARNS at Bank Street College of Education. LEARNS provides training and technical assistance to all Corporation for National Service projects focused on literacy, tutoring and mentoring. Previously, Gold taught in the Bank Street School for Children and Graduate School. She has worked as an educational consultant in New York public schools and in countries including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Bulgaria, and Nepal.