I find morning meetings to be a daily MUST. It is a great routined way to start out the day and provide that immediate structure as soon as your students get into class. Let’s discuss 3 important things to include in your morning meeting.
Greet your students during your morning meeting
The first thing I do when I start my morning meeting is sing a hello song and go around to each one of my students and say good morning. I will then have my students respond and say good morning back to me using their preferred mode of communication (AAC device, verbal language, sign language, etc.) This is to have my students focus on responding when someone is greeting them and to work on conversation skills by using their language abilities.
To enhance this portion, I also like to incorporate my students greeting each other and have them practice interacting and socializing with their peers. I like to use the website https://wheelofnames.com/, which chooses the student who will be greeting their peer and what peer they will be greeting, by using a spinning wheel. I especially love using this website because it shows the name of the student that was chosen in big bold writing which then works on name identification- having the students recognize their name in written form.
For students who need more support, you can add a picture of them on to the wheel, which then has them work on identifying themselves in a picture format. My students really love when we do this activity!
Calendar concepts
The main part of the morning meeting is always teaching calendar concepts. Examples of these are: days of the week, yesterday was/today is/ tomorrow will be, months, todays date, year, and the weather. I like to call on my students to take turns going to the front of the class and participating in the calendar activity by interacting with the google slide or if its a printed out calendar, then choosing the appropriate piece to velcro on.
Song and dance
My third key element that I make sure to include in my morning meeting is some song and dance time! I always start and end the meeting with a song, and then incorporate different songs that goes with each calendar concept. For example, if we just got done going over the days of week and doing yesterday was/today is/tomorrow will be, then I play a days of the week song. For this, I choose a student to come to the front of the class and choose what days of the week song they want to listen to out of a field of 3 options.
While the song is playing my students can get up out of their desk and move around and dance! Whole group meetings and sitting at a desk for a duration of time can be hard for my students, and being since my morning meetings can last anywhere from 20-30 minutes, incorporating songs and dance can make it easier for my students to sit and attend for the entirety of the meeting.
Incorporating a morning meeting into your daily routine is a great way to work on multiple skills during one chunk of time! No matter what our day looks like, this is one schedule element that we never change.
Digital Morning meeting is available here.
Free morning meeting calendar labels are available here.
What else would you add in your morning meeting?
