Morning Meeting - a great way to start the day!

In an earlier post, I talked a little bit about Morning Meetings and sharing as a way to start the day.  Today, I'd like to share a little bit more.

 First, let me tell you that I have attended several Responsive Classroom Training sessions.  I highly recommend Responsive Classroom 1 and 2 (which are week long training sessions) as well as Response to Misbehavior.  I have learned so much from these valuable workshops!  Responsive Classroom is a research based program that is considered one of the best social skills and relationship building "programs" in the country.  I do not work for the company, but I believe in it whole heartedly!

Second, if you cannot attend one of these workshops - you can learn a lot online through their webpage, blog, facebook and videos on youtube.  These resources are free!!! 

Third, if you really want to learn more I recommend purchasing the book Morning Meetings for only $24 on their website.  It is a great place to start!

Now, let me share with you what we do each and every day!

We start our day with a Morning Meeting.  This has four components:  Greetings, Share, Activity and Morning Message.  Since we are more than halfway through the year and my students go to a school where they have been doing Morning Meetings since Kindergarten, my fourth graders have a lot of experience with it.

Greetings:  We sit in a circle near the white board so that we can all see each other's faces.  The students will look at each other and say a greeting.  A greeting can be as simple as "hello" or "good morning" or as complicated as switching the first letter of your name to a Z and saying hello "Zaul" instead of Paul. This is a great way to build community and have a little fun too!

Share Time:  I always share our schedule and learning goals for the day.  Some kids really need to know what to expect for the day...it puts them at ease.  All kids need to know what they are learning and sometimes, what the purpose of the activity will be.  Students share important news, artifacts from home or even something they learned from their homework.  Again, this allows kids to feel they are not invisible in the classroom and it gives them a platform to be noticed.

Activity:  Time for a fun game, song or academic review.  I plan to post later this week with more information about activities...but some of our favorites include - playing bop-it as a class, a game called Pop-Corn and Telephone. 

Morning Message:   In my classroom, we have two messages...one from me on the smart board and a question that is student driven on the whiteboard.  The kids have a list of questions to pick from and they write their answers on the whiteboard...hmmm...seeing another post coming up on this as well. 

I hope you will consider adding this component into your day.  It only takes about 15 minutes and it is soooooooo worth it!  If you have any questions, please ask!  I love to talk about this topic....