Holding a daily morning meeting in your upper elementary classroom is an important part of building classroom community.
It is a specific time set aside each day to meet with your students, greet them by name, complete a community activity, and share important happenings at school and in the lives of your students.
Planning for morning meetings can sometimes feel overwhelming, I know! But there are so many benefits to holding a daily morning meeting. Having a consistent morning meeting helps:
- our day start off calm and focused
- our classroom environment became positive and kind
- students feel valued and that their voice is important and heard
- students feel appreciated and looking forward to collaboration and discussion time with their peers
- our classroom community become stronger than ever
Since there are so many benefits, you will want to start holding a morning meeting today!
I laid out all the ins and outs and how I run my morning meeting HERE.
This post includes three quick tips to help you get started with morning meetings in your upper elementary classroom.
1. Keep it Simple
When it comes to holding morning meetings each day, create a schedule and a routine that is manageable for you and your schedule. You can have a quick morning meeting each day that simply includes a greeting and activity that unites all of your students together. Once you get into a routine, you can add more to your meeting time. The key is to just start! Start simple and build on!
Teacher tip: If you are worried you will go on too long during the morning meeting set a classroom timer for 15 minutes. When the timer goes off, wrap up and get right on to the next task.
2. Include a Picture Book Read-Aloud
Have you taken a closer look at how I run morning meetings each day of the week? Look HERE.
You will see that I complete activities with my students around motivational quotes that follow a theme. One of the activities I do each week focused on the theme of the week is to read a picture book that also follows that theme. This is a great way to incorporate reading and standards into your morning meeting.
The best part about reading aloud one day a week during morning meetings is that the picture book that you read can be repurposed during other lessons throughout the week or month. Using one picture book in many ways always helps me make the most of classroom time and show students how important it is to read books over and over with a different lens each time.
Teacher tip: Keep an anchor chart list of the books that you read for each theme of the week. When it comes time to teach students about themes in literature, you will already have a great list and starting point, making teaching this tricky concept so much easier!
I have compiled a free list of the picture book read-alouds that I use during morning meeting time by theme right here.
3. Focus on Social-Emotional Topics and Themes
During the sharing portion of your morning meeting do a quick check in with students by asking them how they are! You do not need fancy manipulatives, posters, or tools. Just ask! You can engage students and encourage more participation by using movement. For example: thumbs up if you had a great morning today, put your hands on your head if you are ready for a great day, give yourself a hug if you need a little extra TLC today. These simple prompts and movements will help you to see which students may need a little more support to make it through the day. You can follow up with each student individually if you see that some may be down.
To go even further into important topics, we focus on themes that allow open discussions, sharing, and class activities that are important to the students and their well-being.
Here are the 6 themes we focus on throughout the year:
- Community Building
- Friendship
- Kindness
- Learning Strategies/Education
- Work Ethic
- Motivation and Inspiration
Teacher tip: Come up with focus themes by brainstorming topics that you want to bring up with students but do not have the time to during the day. Make those the focus theme for your morning meetings.
Remember that there are so many benefits of holding a daily morning meeting, so don't let planning or anything else stay in your way. When you incorporate these quick tips you will be making the most of the time you spend with students each day during meeting time, which will make morning meetings a vital part of your day.
Grab the FREE morning meeting starter kit below!
Grab everything you need to get started with focused morning meeting activities HERE.
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