Hello friends!! :) It's Haley here from My Silly Firsties! :) I wanted to blog a little bit about Morning Messages today. It's such a fun way to start our day, and my kiddos are already loving it!
Here's the reasons I came up with for doing a Morning Message! I'm sure there are tons more! I'd love to hear them!!
Here are some ideas for what to include! :) Of course...you can do what feels right for you and your class!
And here are some examples! :)
I hope this little post was helpful to you!! :) Be sure to check out the calendar for our upcoming posts!
Friends~Do you host a morning meeting with your class? I do, and it is one of my most favorite parts of the day. It truly sets the tone for how our day will unfold. It helps to build a strong classroom community all year long. I am so lucky that at my new school we have time set aside in grades K-4 to have morning meeting each and every day! Today, I am going to share with you some ideas to get your own morning meeting time started! I was so lucky this year to be working with a morning meeting master! I got to observe one of our 2nd grade teachers this year that has been doing morning meeting forever. Mrs. Poling has the best format and her's is so directed towards character education. She starts each week off with a word of the week. Like this week was COOPERATION. She reads a book at each morning meeting that goes along with the word of the week. She even has a song for each word! So AWESOME! She introduced me to these great CDs by Red Grammar. They are perfect for morning meeting. We use the Just Say Hi as our signal to begin MM. Student head up to the front and sit in a circle and sing along!
Some ideas for Words of the Week are:
Compassion, Active Listening, and Self Control
I highly recommend you get yourself a squeaky hammer! I use a squeaky hammer to call the meeting to order and my students get a huge kick out of it. I always welcome them in a fun way. You can see some ideas below. After I call the meeting to order, we count off to check our attendance.
We also welcome each other with a fist bump, hand shake, or a high five!
Next, we get to our shares. The students love this time because they get to share their exciting news with the class.
I love this book for keeping my morning meeting on track. It has awesome ideas and tips!
I use our stuffed hedgehog Henrietta to choose students to share. I pass the Henrietta around and the students hold her in their laps as they share. (This really helps in the beginning when the students are a bit nervous.) After each share, I say THINK and the students put their heads down and think of a comment or question about the share. The student who shared chooses two students to call on. During this time we are working on eye contact and listening skills.
We also say our class pledge and work some brain gym to We Are the Champions by Queen!
I love to get them up and moving as much as possible. Check them out below activating both sides of their brains and pledging to show courage!
We also review our ABC sounds and read our word wall at the end of every morning meeting. Starting in January, I began having a student lead morning meeting. At my school, we work on special goals for presenting like voice level and poise. Morning Meeting is a perfect time for my kiddos to practice this!
Grab some FREE information about our ENRICH goals and how my morning meeting leader is assessed by clicking HERE!
I am always amazed at how much we accomplish during this time!
We then meet again up front for calendar time and also to focus on our word of the week. Sometimes, like Mrs. Poling we will read a story that goes along with our word or we may do some role playing. I like to mix it up a bit. The cool thing is grades K-4 all have the same word of the week so we are all focusing on the same skill.
You can check out more of my morning meeting ideas by clicking the picture below. My Morning Meeting Manual will get you started on your way to a successful morning meeting!
You can also see how I lead morning meeting in a much tighter schedule at my old school. Still one of my 2nd graders favorite parts of the day! Just click my blog button below to get started!
