Dia dhuit! (JEE-uh Gwitch) That's the greeting, "Hello," in the Celtic language of Ireland. Last year, I wrote an article about a Responsive Classroom tool called "The Morning Message," which occurs during our daily morning gathering (known as "Circle Time" or the "Morning Meeting"). As we start our school day, we also reach into our bag of tricks to incorporate another community-building tool: "The Morning Meeting Greeting."

Many of our teachers have attended a Responsive Classroom training program, and all of our teachers practice these tools in their classrooms. Responsive Classroom, as described on their website, "is a research- and evidence-based approach to education that is associated with greater teacher effectiveness, higher student achievement, and improved school climate" and "one of the most well-designed, evidence-based social and emotional learning programs." The Morning Greeting is one of many techniques that WMS teachers use to build community in the classroom. The Greeting promotes social and emotional skills in our students and it makes connections between Morning Meeting and the academic curriculum. It is a common starting point that sets the tone for our day.

Like the Morning Message, the Greeting develops in complexity as the year progresses. In the beginning of the year, the goal of the Greeting is to help children transition into the day, build community, and stimulate engagement and empathy for one another - in other words, a lot of trust building. The Morning Greeting may initially begin as an introduction to learning our friends' names, proper handshakes, good eye contact and public speaking. For the first few months of school, it will take the form of name games, high fives, pinky shakes, elbow bumps, and the peace and love greetings (using our hands to make peace signs and hearts). The Morning Greeting provides the children with a sense of routine. But like all things Montessori, we take pride in doing things many times in many different ways.
 

As the year progresses, we are interested in challenging our children and maintaining their interest. The children look forward to the excitement of the greeting and what the day holds. We begin to purposefully weave the Morning Greeting into our Morning Meeting through intentional connections to our curriculum. We greet each other in languages from around the world. We make connections between our greeting and whichever cultural unit we may be focusing on at the moment. For example, we just celebrated and learned about U.S. Presidents. The children greeted each other pretending to be a different president each day. The George Washington greeting was silly, as we greeted each other as if we had no teeth (after all, he only had one tooth left when he became President)! When we did the Abraham Lincoln greeting, we pretended to put our paper reminders up high into our tall top hat, while greeting the friend next to us in a deep voice.  You can imagine the enjoyment we have when greeting each other as groundhogs and Chinese New Year monkeys.
 

While learning about units of measurement, straws of different lengths were given to each child. The leader began the greeting by holding up their straw and determining which friend's straw was an exact match to the length of his or her own. Once the child found his or her partner, they greeted him or her. This can also be done with language work comparisons, rhyming, look-alikes and math equations (one person has a card with a math equation on it and the other person has a card with the corresponding sum). This gets our brains active, moving and ready for the day. To make the morning even richer, keep in mind that the Morning Message also connects the curriculum and the greeting. Before 9:30 a.m., our children have already accomplished so much and made memorable connections.
 

We build camaraderie and trust as we greet each other each day. When you can be silly with your friends and have fun learning at the same time, it's no wonder that our students love coming to school!