Classroom of the week: Sarah Merritt’s third-grade class

Ever seen a class of third-graders doing yoga?

For Sarah Merritt’s third-graders at Avery School, it’s just part of the morning routine.

On a recent Friday, the class reads out loud a poem that describes how trees bend and sway, and can see around a house or over a hill. The poem “Tree,” ends with “At the tip of each branch / there is an eye” – a possible allusion to a yoga posture.

Following their teacher’s lead, the students begin doing a series of stretches – moving their heads in circles, extending their arms and rotating in either direction, shaking out their hands, and dropping their bodies forward like rag dolls.

Echoing the tree poem, 9-year-old Samantha Dejean demonstrates how to put one bent knee on her other leg, while raising her clasped hands to the sky. Yoga ends with the kids enthusiastically wishing their classmates “Namaste” – metaphorically bowing to the light within each other, though in practice they exchange many high-fives.

Merritt says the yoga focuses and relaxes her students – and that is evident as they return to their desks and quietly resume writing in their journals, while soft Beethoven music plays.

The activity, yoga, was actually the third part of “Morning Meeting,” following greeting and sharing. In the first, two students at a time wished each other a good day. Some kids add their own twist, such as Johnny Diaz, 9, who tells Alexia Montanez, 8, “I like your purple headband.”

“Have a better day than me,” 8-year-old Julyanny Pequero tells Diaz, who bids him good morning and adds, “I like your sneakers.”

The students tend to shake hands very strongly, and continuously, during their interactions; some use both hands for a final emphatic shake.

The last girl ends with “Good morning, 3M.”

“Good morning, Patricia,” the class replies.

Merritt then talks with her students about what they enjoy about “greeting.” She asks Pequero if he’s having a bad day, referring to his comment. He says he’s not: “I just want people to have good days.”

Next comes “sharing,” in which individual students tell their news (birthday parties come up a few times), and answer several questions from their peers.

Merritt explains that the morning routine is from “Responsive Classroom,” an approach to elementary teaching that emphasizes the social, emotional and academic growth of students in a “strong and safe school community.” Among its guiding principles are that the social curriculum is just as important as the academic curriculum, and that children, to be successful, need to learn the social skills of cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy and self-control.

“Being able to feel a part of the community, get to know each other, take risks, share, all of the eye contact, it just helps them and builds the sense of community,” Merritt says.

At their desks, Dejean writes about how she got her swine flu shot at the middle school a few nights before. She says it was a relief to get it, “but it hurts!”

Meantime Fiona Glynn, 8, has already written a full page about her sleepover birthday party, to be held belatedly that day. The kids also periodically read “THANKSGIVING” acrostic poems.

“At first they thought it was just funny,” Merritt says of the yoga, but now she sees some students doing poses around school on their own. “They’ll just sit on the floor and do a spiral twist.”

Dedham Transcript staff writer Edward B. Colby can be reached at 781-433-8336 or ecolby@cnc.com.