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Morning Meeting
In
order to develop social skills and a classroom community, we will be
having a daily "Morning Meeting". This is a time when we
come together to learn, celebrate our classroom family, and cheer
one another on during learning activities.
Here is our meeting area. We sit in a circle... it's tough to
squeeze 26 3rd graders in, but we make room for everyone!
Our
Morning Meetings will follow the same format each day. Providing a
predictable routine is one of the ways to develop a feeling of
safety for students in the beginning of the year.
 We
begin by gathering on our rug and sitting in a circle. We choose a
greeting and each student greets the person next to them (or
whatever the greeting requires). To make remembering the steps to
greetings easier, I compiled them into a set of cards that I
laminated, hole punched, and put on a ring. I keep this with our
easel and other meeting materials.
In
the beginning of the year, we spend time doing a "normal" handshake
greeting. Students learn how to look the person they are speaking to
in the eye, speak clearly, and give a firm handshake. They also
learn how to politely ask a person's name if they have forgotten.
After students are comfortable with the "normal" greeting, we move
on to other greetings.
After
the greeting, we participate in an activity. I also have a ring of
activity cards that stay with our materials for easy access.
I don't stick to just those activities. Often the activity
reviews a grammar or math skill we are learning. We also do
trivia, Mad Libs, comprehension activities, and task cards.
However, the
activity should not take longer than 5 minutes. I love doing the
activity each day. Kids get really good at laughing at each
other and this is a great
opportunity for students to laugh with one another in a
non-threatening way.
When
I taught 1st and 2nd grades, after
the activity, I moved from being a part of the circle to a chair so
that I could facilitate shared writing during our "News of the
Day" {click
here to check out a blog post on news of the day}. This was an
interactive writing time where the leader of the day got to share
something that we then wrote down together. This was a great
opportunity for me to model spelling strategies and sneak in our
grammar skill for the week! At the end, the kid who gave the
news got to lead us in reading
the message using a fun pointer! During this time I always
incorporated the grammar skill that our reading series was focusing on
for the week. We ended with a read-aloud of a picture book that
focused on whichever writing trait we were studying. This lead
naturally into writing, as students would leave to practice the skill we
had just talked about during grammar and studying author's craft.
Now that I teach 3rd grade, I use Morning Meeting only as a
community building time. I do not teach a mini-lesson with
news of the day {although as I type this, I'm wondering if they
wouldn't enjoy it too...?}. In 3rd grade, we do a greeting and
activity and that is usually the end of our meeting. Sometimes
we talk about "housekeeping" issues that arise in our classroom.
This shows off some of the things we do during morning meeting.
We do a vocabulary word each day (you can find them
HERE on Amazon and they seem really cheap right now!). We
do a Common Core ELA review. I have these reviews for
1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades on TpT. The other things are all
of the quick games, task cards, and other activities I have
collected to use during this time.
Here's our easel and the box that I sit on
(it holds all my bulletin board stuff inside!). You can see my bins
of "stuff" on the bottom of the easel. The table below gives more
information about my PM Meeting essentials- that's what you see on
the bottom of the easel.
This is one of my favorite times of the day
and my students love it too. It is a great way to build community
and work together as a group.
PM
Meeting Essentials
*Easel and
paper
I love my easel from
Teacher Direct!
*Markers in various colors to
make things stand out- smelly markers or the Sharpie markers
for chart paper work wonderfully!
*Fun pointers for
students to use as they read the message!
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Tubs with
supplies for different activities:
I store these
under my easel- see picture below!
*Soft ball (ball toss
greeting- sit in a circle and students say hello by tossing
a ball to a friend)
*Picture books to use for
quick activities
*Student name cards for
various activities
*Some type of word cards
(sight words, antonyms and synonyms, vocabulary, etc...) for
students to pair up, find matches, etc...
*Sometimes I use the
comprehension beach balls to tie our activity in to our
reading
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Professional
Books:
*Morning
Meeting & Afternoon Wrap-up by Donna Whyte
*The
Morning Meeting Book by Roxann Kriete
*99
Greetings and Activities by Melissa Correa- Connelly
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*Here are some of our activities-
comprehension balls, Mad Libs, and trivia cards. These
are stored on the bottom of my easel. (This is an old
picture from the first year I did Morning Meeting... I'm
amazed at how much more STUFF I've collected for this over
the years!) |
*More activities and mini-lesson
materials- comprehension wands, task cards to do as a group,
"I have, Who has" games, and other group activities to
review grammar, math, and reading skills. (Again- old
picture! See the pic above for my current collection!) |
Morning Meeting was created by Responsive
Classroom. They are not affilated with this page of my website
and do not endorse it. This page is here to share how morning
meeting works for me and I am hopeful it can work for you too!
Please check out their books for greeting and activity ideas!
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