Connection is everything, inside the classroom and out. During these hard times, connection means even more. Morning meetings are one of my favourite ways to build connection with my students. Teaching online due to the pandemic, I’ve had to find a way to adapt since we can no longer meet in a circle around our beloved classroom carpet. My solution: hosting a daily online morning meeting.
1. Padlet
Using Padlet as a tool is my favourite way to host an online morning meeting. I’ve created 5 different padlets. One for each day of the week. If you want to stick to the free version, you could refresh one padlet, daily.
Every day, I post a morning meeting sharing prompt. You can do this by creating a post and typing your own prompt. I like to take a screenshot of my monthly themed morning meeting sharing prompt cards as it saves me time. Also, it makes it pretty… and that’s important too, right?!
I encourage my students to participate in the online morning meeting by posting their responses in videos to help create that sense of community. However, I let them know that typed responses are okay, too.
I also recommend enabling the comment function to allow more conversation among students based on their responses.
The padlet link for your daily online morning meeting can be shared however you communicate to students. I share our link via Google Classroom but other ideas are: parent or student email, Seesaw, Remind, Class Dojo, etc.
2. Google Classroom
Before switching to using Padlet for our daily meetings, I was using Google Classroom to host our daily online morning meeting. I would post a screenshot of a sharing prompt as “material” under the topic “Morning Meeting”. Students would then comment their answers to the sharing prompt. It was an easy way to hear students’ thoughts. I was also able to schedule these posts out to be shared daily, at 8am.
3. Seesaw
Online morning meetings hosted on Seesaw would look very similar to ones hosted on Google Classroom. I recommend uploading a sharing prompt card and having students comment on that post. Alternatively, you could encourage students to respond via video, similar to what I discussed for the online morning meetings that I host on Padlet.
4. Google Meet
Hosting a live, online morning meeting is possible through Google Meet. You can go into present mode if you wish to show one of the morning meeting sharing cards (mentioned above).
Using Google Meet, students could even lead morning meetings! However, I don’t recommend having students lead a meeting until they’ve participated in a few Google Meet style online morning meetings. After they’ve participated in a few, they will have a better understanding of the format and how to use the platform which will help them be more successful.
I feel that having some type of online morning meeting is essential during these difficult times. They give students the opportunity to share their thoughts and feelings. Morning meetings allow them to connect to their peers and to you, their teacher.
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask! I have a highlight on my instagram profile that shows you how I set up my online morning meetings using padlet. Check it out by clicking here.
Further Reading
To read more about morning meetings click the links below:
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