4 Meaningful Rules to Set During Morning Meeting
Rules in Morning Meeting help to maintain boundaries and create a safe, inclusive environment for all students to participate. At the beginning of the year, it is important to lay the groundwork for a routined, structured morning meeting so that you are able to effectively make the most of this time everyday.
The Most Important Rules
There are 4 types of rules that I believe you must have regarding your morning meeting to ensure your students feel comfortable and you can effectively lead the meeting.
- Where/ how students should sit
- Eyes on speaker
- Calm body/ self control
- Show respect and kindness to everybody
The wording of these should change depending on your grade level and how you plan to teach expectations to your students, but the overall message of the rule should be the same.
Before you teach your rules to your students, it is important to decide what routines and procedures you want to have in place for your daily morning meeting. As you teach those then you should explain, practice, and model how the rules will look in action. When you are teaching each component of morning meeting use these 4 main guidelines as a way of showing how each part will look and feel.
Morning meeting rules should really be a guide to making your circle a safe space, rather than micro managing students’ words and actions.
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I believe that it is important to explain this to your students so they can internalize and respect the purpose of the guidelines. I have morning meeting preplanned for the whole year which includes prewritten and typeable rule slides for each component of morning meeting!
It is also helpful to have specific wording for the rules that you refer to so that you are able to leave them if there is a sub in your room.
Overall, remember that when you create each rule with your students they should not give off a feeling of restriction rather a feeling of comfort!
