Morning meetings are a great way to build community in your classroom. I was trained in the responsive classroom method, which utilizes morning meetings. Ever since, morning meeting has always been one of my favorite parts of the school day! Read on to find out how to use morning meeting slides to facilitate a great start to your day.
Responsive classroom approach
Response classroom teaches that a morning meeting consists of 4 parts: a greeting, a share, an activity, and a morning message. The entire morning meeting should last around 20 minutes. It is not meant to take up a large portion of the school day and cut into instruction. The purpose is to build classroom community and allow students to have some fun before their day of rigorous instruction begins!
Greeting
The teacher should start out by introducing a greeting for the class to do with one another.
It can be a greeting where students are in a circle and greet their neighbor (give them a fist bump, say good morning in different silly voices, etc.), or it can be something where students individually say a greeting to the class.
One of my favorites is the “shoe salad” greeting. Everyone removes one shoe and puts it in the middle of a circle. Each person takes a turn choosing one shoe. Whoever the shoe belongs to, that person says good morning to. My kindergarten students absolutely loved this one! There are many that are very simple as well, such as turn to your partner and give them a “micro-wave” (wave with your pinkie).
I also remind students that if they are not comfortable with participating in any part of the morning meeting, they can choose to pass on it, as long as they remain respectful to others. If you have a student that is nonverbal, be sure to provide options for them so they can participate along with the other students. For example, you can print them out words or pictures that go along with the activity you will be doing.
You can use Google Slides/PowerPoint to create slides for each part of the morning meeting and display them. These slides can include instructions and examples for the greeting. Depending on age and reading levels, you may have to read the slides to the students or use more pictures than words.
Below is an example of a morning meeting greeting slide from Simple Special Ed.
Share
The share consists of a simple question that students answer. This can be done one at a time as a large group, or with small groups or partners if you don’t want to take up a lot of time. The question can be displayed on a slide for students to see.
One of my personal favorite types of questions are the “one must go” questions. For example, one must go: Reese’s, Kit-Kat, M&M’s, or Snickers. Students then have to choose which one they like the least, even if they like all of them!
Debate questions are fun too! For example, is a hot dog a sandwich? Why or why not? It is always so fun to hear the students’ different answers to this! You can do a quick google search for these types of questions and put them into a slide for your students to see. Again, make sure to adapt to the needs of your individual students and provide alternatives for nonverbal students to participate.
For younger students and students that need a more basic type of share question, you can have students share how they are feeling today. This slide from SSE shows a simple, easy way to do that.
Activity
The activity portion is basically a quick game for students to play. Again, this can be done in partners, a small group, or with the whole class. It can be as simple as a quick game of “I Spy”, a circle game like telephone, etc. It is completely up to you!
One of my favorites is the “change game”. You choose one student to “change” something about them and go into the hallway with that student to make the change. For example, you may untie one shoe, unbutton a button on their shirt, take a bow out of their hair, put their bracelet on the other wrist, etc. Before you leave with them, have the rest of the students “study” that child for one minute so they pay attention to their appearance. You then bring him/her back in front of the group and have students take turns guessing what the change was. The first person to get it right is the next one to be “changed”.
Putting the directions on a slide for the student and keeping it up for them to see can be helpful, especially for younger students. Again, adapt the activity to your individual classroom needs.
There are tons of fun morning meeting activities and games out there than can be added onto a slide!
You can also have students sing and dance to a song or a movement video during this time as well. This morning meeting slide from Simply Special Ed shows an example of this!
Morning Message
To close out the morning meeting, you can provide a morning message to the students. The purpose of this message is to give the students a quick overview of the day. You will want to include the date written out for students to see, since it is in the format of a letter.
It doesn’t need to be long, no longer than a few sentences. You can tell students what’s for lunch that day, what special they will go to, what they will be learning about, etc.
I like to put this on a slide and have one of the students read it aloud (this can be a classroom job for the day or week). If students are younger and just learning how to read, you can practice choral reading as a whole class. You can also have students come up and circle certain letters/sounds/vocabulary words etc. as a literacy extension.
Make it your own
Of course, you always want to make sure you are meeting the needs of your students. If the traditional morning meeting structure is too difficult for your class, you can make it more basic by doing a quick greeting and share, or a share and morning message, etc.
If your students are in need of a more academic based morning meeting, these slides from SSE are helpful. You can have them identify the weather, the colors they are wearing, the season, how they came to school, etc.
You can find the link to the special education classroom setup bundle here, which includes these morning meeting slides and lots more!
Morning meeting is an awesome way to start off each school day. It is easily adaptable so you can make it your own, and putting the material on slides for your students to see makes it easy!
