Morning Meeting

Morning meeting has always been my FAVORITE part of the day and has transformed my classroom community and culture.

CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW FOR A FULL LIST OF MORNING MEETING IDEAS

Morning meeting is a time each day (normally the first thing in the morning after students arrive) when students and educators meet to greet each other and do an activity. Holding morning meetings regularly helps build a positive classroom community where students build meaningful relationships with each other, build confidence, and problem-solve together.

“No significant learning occurs without significant relationships.”

Benefits of Morning Meeting:

-Builds strong relationships

-Allows time to teach SEL skills

-It provides and emotional check-in

-It helps build community

-Helps reduce behavioral challenges

-Allows kids the space to be authentically themselves and share what is on their mind

-Reinforces expectations/academics can be taught through morning meeting

-It helps students develop confidence and trust

-Kids learn that all voices matter

-It can be an outlet for mental health supports

-It increases student engagement

-Kids practice problem-solving skills

Prepping Morning Meeting

Make it apart of your daily schedule: Morning meeting can be anywhere from 10-30 minutes (depending on how much time you want to dedicate to it, it normally takes me about 25 minutes). Think about how you want students to engage in morning meeting. Typically having student seated in a circle works best but you do what is best for you and your class!

Be adaptable: Does you school not allow time for morning meeting? If so, that breaks my heart but you can still make it work! If you do not have a morning time available for morning meeting, consider doing a class meeting time just before lunch or even at the end of the day. Find what works for you so that you can be consistent with it over time.

Tell students what morning meeting is: Explain to students that it is a daily class meeting where students will have a chance to talk, listen, and learn some new things. Explain to them the structure of morning meeting (Greeting, Share, Activity, Message)

Involve students: Morning meeting has always been one of students favorite part of the day. Once students have the structure down allow them to switch off and choose which greeting and activity they want the class to do and what share question they want to discuss with the class!

Set the stage: Ground morning meeting in your classroom agreements. Think: what do you want your classroom to look like? Sound like? Feel like? What classroom agreements will get you to those goals. Remember, it is SO important students have a say in what they want their agreements to be. (I have a lesson on making classroom agreement with your class on my tik tok, I will also post the materials needed on this blog in the following weeks).

Components of a Strong Morning Meeting

1- Greeting: This is such a fun way for students to say good morning and greet their classmates

2- Share: A share question can be silly, academic related, or more insightful (I like to switch it up) it gives students the space to listen to each other and learn more deeply about each other. (Make sure students have silent think time before sharing whole group. I have my students show me a silent thumbs up when they are ready to share then we share out 1 by 1 in the circle)

3- Activity: Who doesn't love a good game? This teaches students problem-solving skills along with what it looks like to "win" and "lose." Before playing games always establish with students what it look like when you "lose" a game and how to cheer on classmates who win.

4- Morning message: A call and repeat morning message sets up students for the day and gives them a preview into what they will be doing that day!