5 Things to Improve Your Morning Meeting Planning
There are so many different ways to facilitate morning meeting. I want to help you focus on the 5 most important things to consider during your morning meeting planning to focus on your specific students so that they get the most out of that special time everyday! Scroll all the way down to watch me explain this in video form if you would rather!
1. The Comfort of Your Students
Start your morning meeting planning by thinking about your students’ comfort level with their peers and themselves. If it is the beginning of the year, think about how students may not know each others’ names. Think about physical distancing, if you have 5th graders are they going to be comfortable holding hands or will they giggle? Think through the greeting and activities you are considering in your morning meeting planning from your students’ perspectives.
2. Personality of Your Class
What makes your class special and unique? Do they embrace silly things? Can they handle using self control and active movement around the room? Are they competitive? If this is the case, I suggest starting with cooperative games that do not have a clear winner or loser as you build though good sportsmanship skills. Use your morning meeting planning to incorporate aspects that your students will thrive during and enjoy participating in! Every group of students is different, make sure your morning meetings reflect your current students.
3. Age, Physical & Educational Ability
All morning meeting greetings and activities can be modified for any grade level. During your morning meeting planning, consider your students developmental ability. If they need to use a ball, can they throw and catch a ball? What size or texture ball would be best? Do students have good control of their limbs to make shapes with their bodies? Do the students need to read or have certain background knowledge? Think about what the morning meeting greeting or activity calls for them to do, then think about if any modifications need to be made for your students physical abilities.
This series of books, What Every 4th Grade Teacher Needs to Know, really helped me understand for each grade level the physical developments at that age and how I need to accommodate that in my classroom.
4. Time Restraints
Make sure during your morning meeting planning that you are deciding how long you are planning the whole meeting to last and the time allocated for each aspect. If you are planning a longer greeting, then make sure you pick a shorter activity to balance the time out.
5. Seasonality
My personal favorite aspect of morning meeting planning is theming the greetings, sharing topics, and questions to the month or upcoming holidays! I know you are probably thinking that you don’t have time to teach your students new games every day. You don’t have to!! Use routines that your students already know and make slight changes for the season. Read about my Thanksgiving morning meeting here.
I have seasonal greetings, share questions, and activities all ready for you to start using!
Grab my FREE morning meeting planning template here to stay organized!
If you want help with planning, please reach out to me! I am more than happy to help you! I also have the whole year planned for you if you want that! My Morning Meeting 40 Weeks has social emotional themed morning meetings to everyday of the year ready to go!
