Past Years’ Morning Meetings
In past years, my morning meetings were brief and simply offered students the opportunity to share something with the class. I did not include morning meeting greetings or group activities. Some years, morning meetings were more popular than others. Some students were very engaged in morning meeting and loved having the floor to share something about their lives. Last years’ class in particular was incredibly eager to share. They would eagerly snatch up the talking stick and set into a humourous story to make their peers laugh. In learning about morning meetings, I knew that I wanted to improve my use of morning meetings. I wanted to see if I could create a structured morning meeting that would help me build class community.
Our Current Morning Meetings
Over the summer, I devoured The Morning Meeting Book by Roxann Kriete & Carol Davis. I knew upon reading it that I wanted to incorporate a more substantial morning meeting into my routine during the 2019-2020 school year. This year, I am following the Responsive Classroom approach to morning meetings. I am incorporating the four components that they suggest: morning meeting greetings, sharing, group activities, and morning messages.
Our morning meeting is hosted at the carpet. We start by meeting in a circle for our morning meeting greetings. We shift between a circle formation sitting in a group, depending on the sharing and group activity of the day.
Through various morning meeting greetings, sharing, and activities, students learn so much about each other. Within the first two weeks of school, I’ve already learned what students love to do on their own time, how they learn best, their favourite flexible seating spots in our class, and who they love to spend time with. Some students have felt comfortable enough to discuss personal things that have helped everyone understand them more. I’ve also been able to get a sense of the leadership skills that some of my students have. These skills have become apparent through some of our group activities.
Morning Meeting Greetings
Our morning meetings occur first thing in the morning so that students can experience a fun, no pressure start to their day. They have a chance to be greeted and welcomed to give them a positive start. This sets the tone for any of the learning that follows. This makes a positive impact for all kids, but especially kids that may not have had a calm, smooth morning.
Morning Meeting Sharing
During the sharing portion of morning meeting, students have the opportunity to speak to the class and share their opinions. It allows them to get used to speaking to their peers without anything being at stake. Students that were reluctant to share the first week of school are now speaking up during morning meeting and it’s great to see their comfort level increase.
Morning Meeting Activities
Group activities are a great way to encourage group work among students. It gives an opportunity for leadership and has them working with each other first thing in the morning. They look forward to this part of the morning meeting the most. They love seeing what the activity will be and love tackling them as they view them as a “challenge”.
Morning Meeting Messages
Our morning messages are up on the board as students walk in. They share important tidbits about the day or week ahead. Sometimes I incorporate an interactive portion to our message. One of the examples below shows that students were asked to record what they enjoyed most about our week together. I’ve started including the day’s sharing topic in the P.S. section of the message so students can be prepared for our meeting.
Only Downside – Prep Work
It is clear that morning meetings have the potential to have an incredible impact on our students and our classroom community. The only downside to including daily morning meetings is the planning and prep work involved. To ease this process, I’ve created a morning meeting slides using Google. It includes morning meeting greetings, sharing, and activities as well as templates to type in your daily morning message. This product is a growing bundle that I will continue to update to include all months of the school year.
7 Responses
If I was still in the classroom I’d get this in a heartbeat! My morning meetings used dto start strong and then slack because of the prep needed. Awesome post!
I’ve never heard of that book before but love the concept! How the first part of the class goes can set the tone for the rest of the day – I’ll have to look into how this could be adapted for 1-to-1 instruction.
I love the sentence starters!!! Morning meeting can be difficult at first & this is a great way to help prompt those who need it..
Thank you! Yes, it helps us stay organized and the sentence starters have helped my more reluctant students to participate in our sharing time.
I absolutely love the idea of morning meetings. I haven’t implemented them into my classroom yet, but your blog post changed my perspective on them.
Thank you for sharing! Last year was the first time I did morning meetings and all I did was have students sharing anything they wanted with a talking stick. I wasn’t sure if I would like having such structured morning meetings but after reading The Morning Meeting book, I wanted to give it a try. I’m so glad that I did. It’s our favourite time of the day and such a great way to start off each morning.