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Morning Meeting Ideas for the Elementary Classroom

Does your class have morning meetings? I really saw a change in our classroom environment when I started implementing them daily in my classroom. It all began when I read The Morning Meeting Book a few years ago. I have since changed and adapted the morning meeting routine so that it works for my classroom. In this post, I’m going to talk about the four parts of our morning meeting. I teach 3rd grade but the ideas in this post could be used or adapted for 2nd-5th grade.

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Greeting

When I call the meeting, we all sit in a circle and the first thing we do is greet each other. The kids say good morning to the person to their left and to their right. A rule in my class is that you have to say the person’s name. We practice a lot at the beginning of the year how to say the person’s name and make eye contact when saying good morning. This is a great way to teach kids basic social skills.

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Show Me How You Feel

The next thing we do in morning meeting is to share our feelings. I say, “Show me how you feel.” They use the chart above to hold up the number that matches how they are feeling today. This is one of my favorite parts of morning meeting because it helps me understand why a kid might be acting a certain way. It also helps me find out information about my students’ lives that I might not otherwise know. If a kid is feeling unhappy because they got a bad night’s sleep, I will understand why they might not be able to focus on a lesson.

This part of morning meeting can be very powerful. When kids share their emotions, it helps them feel validated that someone wants to know how they are feeling. They felt heard and seen. If you’d like the free editable feelings chart scroll down to the end of this post!

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Share Time

After we share our feelings we have share time. Share time is a little different in that only two kids share each day. My students are numbered so we decide who goes every day according to their numbers. So if students #1 and #2 shared yesterday, students #3 and #4 share today.

They can share anything they like within reason. I’ve had kids want to bring in live animals to share, so we definitely talk about appropriate things to share! I shared a great book for introducing share time in this post. I also recently discovered the book It’s Show and Tell Dexter and it’s hilarious! Sometimes kids don’t think they have anything to share. This book can lead to some great conversations about being confident in ourselves and what we have to offer. Some ideas for sharing are books they loved, an item from home that’s special, a story about an event in their lives, a dream they had the night before, a fun outing they went on, or a piece of artwork.

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Rules

Next, we practice our rules with hand gestures. I follow Whole Brain Teaching for classroom management. So each of our rules has a hand gesture that the kids come up with at the beginning of the year. We say each of the 5 rules out loud and do the hand gestures that go along with them. Doing this daily helps the kids remember all of the rules. Sometimes we’ll get silly and say the rules in a funny voice. Say the rules in a robot voice and the kids will love rule practice!

Morning Meeting Games

Morning meeting games can also be an addition to your meeting. We don’t play them in my class for morning meeting but I’m going to give you a couple of suggestions that you might want to try out in your own class. The first one is called Packing for Grandma’s House. The teacher starts out by saying, “I’m going on a trip to grandma’s house and I need to pack a toothbrush.” The person to the right of the teacher says, “I’m going on a trip to grandma’s house and I need to pack a toothbrush and…” That person adds an item they are packing. When it’s their turn, each person repeats what has already been packed and adds one thing they are packing as well. It gets really fun near the end when there’s a lot to remember and you can’t repeat anything!

Another game you could try is called A What? You’ll need two small objects that can easily be sent around a circle. The first person hands the object to the person to their right and says, “This is a tomato.” The person taking the object says, “A what?” The first person says, ” A tomato.” The receiver says, “Oh a tomato.” and passes it to the next person. After the “tomato” gets started going around the circle, the second object is passed around in the opposite direction with a different name. When the items meet in the middle of the circle, it can get crazy hilarious! The goal is to get both items around the circle at least one time.

I hope you’ve found some ideas to try out in your own morning meeting. Would you like to use the feelings chart I mentioned? Just sign up below and I will send you the editable chart!

Editable Feelings Chart

 

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