Morning Meeting consists of four main parts:
Greeting
Every student is greeted by name. Sure, you might have shared a killer greeting with each kid as they walked through the door but this gives students an opportunity to practice each other’s names (which is something we do a lot of at the beginning of the year), making direct eye contact, and a good handshake all while building a sense of community and comradery amongst classmates.
Share
There are many ways that students can share. Sharing can be about a specific topic or some days you can let students share about whatever is on their mind. This is a fantastic time for students to practice speaking in complete sentences, public speaking, and listening to others.
Activities
These activities can be simple, such as singing a song with hand motions, or more complex where everyone is participating in a "game" where they are up and moving around the classroom. I like to try and choose teambuilding activities instead of competitive ones so that everyone is starting their day on a positive note. They can be based on an academic skill or just used as a way to "get the wiggles out". All that matters is that students are engaged and working to build a classroom community.
Morning Message
This can be as simple as a message that you write to your students and read back to them or you can use it as an opportunity to pack a huge academic punch and get in a ton of skills in a short amount of time. I like to do my morning message the second way 😉 so that is a whole other blog post that you can find here!
Do you have a morning meeting in your classroom? I would love to hear what some of your favorite greetings and activities are!
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