Morning Meeting

On one of my posts awhile back, I mentioned that I do Morning Meeting. I've had a few questions about how I run my Morning Meeting, so I thought I would share with you what I do.

The Morning Meeting format that I use comes straight from Responsive Classroom, which I was trained in a few years ago.

The are 4 sections to this Morning Meeting. Overall, Morning Meeting should be anywhere from 10-20 minutes, depending on grade level, things you choose to do/focus on, and attention span.

Every meeting starts with a Greeting. Students should be either greeted by the teacher, or each other every day. Greetings can be anything from a quick handshake, to a ball greeting. If you do not have a lot of time to devote to Morning Meeting, having a short Greeting is a place that you can save some time by doing something quick.

Greetings are important because it helps the children feel welcome and that they are appreciated and part of the community. New greetings should be introduced and modeled before having the students do it on their own.

The next section is Sharing. Students share something about themselves. At first, I would recommend a group share, which is asking a question and having the students respond (favorite color, food, etc.). I would slowly move to individual shares, where students could share whatever they wished (although I would limit that number of students who would share in a day, probably no more than 3 a meeting).

Sharing is important because it helps the students feel a part of a the community, and that we really care what is going on with them and their lives.

The third section is the Activity, which is a game that you play with the students. It's great community and team building, and usually gets the students up and moving and their brains working. Activities should be introduced step by step and modeled thoroughly.

The last part of Morning Meeting is the Morning Message. Depending on your grade level, your Message will look different. The Message lets the students know what is upcoming in the day, things they did well yesterday and can be a part of the activity, if you ask a questions on the bottom.

A lot of teachers also use their Message to practice sight words, grammar, fill in the blanks and more. Especially in the younger grades, the Message should be read a couple of times, once by the teacher and then as a group read as the class. In the older grades, you can move the responsibility of reading the message from the teacher to the students.

So those are the 4 parts of my Morning Meeting. I have a few book recommendations if you are interested in starting Morning Meeting. It takes a bit of time to set it up in the beginning, but it is well worth it and a great community building activity!

If you can only buy one, this is it! It has the structure, and greeting and activities in the back!

This is also another good resource.

Great for Activities, leveled for grades

Gives a good idea on how to structure your message for different grade levels

Really good resource, split up by grade level, has plans for the first 6 weeks

If you click on each book, it will take you to its Amazon page.
I hope you found this helpful, and if you have any more questions, please let me know!

Smiles and Sunshine,
Kaitlyn