I absolutely love starting the day with morning meeting! I first experienced morning meeting when I began teaching at an EL Education school. We called them “crew meetings” there, and they had three parts: a greeting, a reading (a quote to discuss), and an activity. My next school was a Responsive Classroom school and our morning meetings followed the greeting-sharing-activity-message format. I love both models equally (and to be honest, there were many days when we were too rushed and only did a greeting and activity–which I still loved!) for the positivity they create at the beginning of the day. I truly believe my students are happier, more productive, and more eager to come to school when we begin the day with community and FUN.
BUT. As much as I love morning meeting, there is a level of planning to make it truly effective that I sometimes just did NOT have time for. Having taught at 4 schools (in 4 states!), I am continually finding myself in curriculum creation mode. Morning meeting is great, but reading and math tend to get priority at planning time. As a result, sometimes our meetings followed the much less effective format of “Hey everyone, let’s do a quick high five greeting, and then…someone suggest a game!” Fun, sure, but not nearly as meaningful as I’d prefer! This got me thinking, though–I teach fifth graders. They’re smart, creative thinkers, and independent. They’re looked upon as leaders in our elementary school. Why would I do all the planning for morning meeting time? Morning meeting is the perfect opportunity to put students in a position of leadership!
My students enjoyed being in charge of morning meeting, but initially, it wasn’t very effective. I added “morning meeting leaders” to our classroom job chart, and the two students with that job for the week would choose a greeting and activity each day. They mainly did so on the spot, and we wound up playing “night guard at the museum” so many times half the class stopped participating. I tried having students suggest activities and voting, but we still usually wound up in a rut of the same few activities (even though they’d tried so many others earlier in the year). The students were in charge, but it still didn’t feel intentional or meaningful.
The key, it turned out, was being intentional about being intentional. I set aside time during our morning meeting time for a week to plan. First, we talked about why each component of morning meeting exists and how to consider classmates’ personalities and preferences when choosing collaborative activities. We discussed how to balance greetings and activities to fit in the given amount of time. Then, students grouped up and were given a day to be in charge of. Each group of students perused a list of greetings and activities to choose from and made decisions together about what we would do. Plans were written and stored. When it was a certain group’s day, they’d grab the binder and use their planning page to lead the meeting. This was so much more effective…and it took the burden off me while allowing students to hone their leadership skills!
I’m happy to say my morning meeting system now is super organized and easy! I made a set of greetings (that you can get for FREE here: Morning Meeting Greetings), sharing topic ideas, and activity ideas that I printed, laminated, and stuck on a ring. I gathered all materials we’d need for these ideas (paper airplane for the paper airplane greeting, masking tape for the quicksand activity, etc.). I made up a planning sheet that walks students through planning a morning meeting, printed out copies, and put them in a binder. Everything is stored in a 3-tier cart for easy access!
I start the year by leading morning meeting myself for about a month. We go through most, if not all, of my greetings and activities so students get to see what each one is like. Then, we talk about how to plan and run morning meeting, and students get time to plan. The first time we do this, each group plans just one day. We debrief how it went once each group has taken their turn, and then new groups form and plan the next set of days. Eventually, we move into groups planning a full week at a time. Students LOVE being in charge and usually do a great job of both respecting each other’s activity choices and considering the likes/dislikes of classmates when choosing things to do. I still lead our message portion, as I usually tie it into our current academic learning, but students run the rest and then turn over message time to me.
Our setup:
Planning pages (which you can find in my planning pack on TpT here!):
And I just have to rave about these yoga cards–they’re perfect for upper elementary! I store them with my morning meeting materials, but they’re great to pull out before a test, during indoor recess, or at the end of the day as well!
