3 Reasons to Add a Morning Meeting to Your Classroom Routines
Coming into the classroom each morning is always an exciting time. Students love to catch up on current events since the last time they saw each other. You can promote a classroom community by incorporating a morning meeting into your daily routine. Students that participate in a daily morning meeting benefit from:
having share time with accountable talk.
making connections and building relationships with their peers.
Students Know They Have a Voice
Our morning meeting follows the same predictable routine. Students know that every morning we will start off with everyone having a chance to speak around our circle.
When students know that they will have a chance to connect with their peers first thing in the morning, it helps them focus and complete morning tasks, like unpacking, more efficiently.
One of the highlights of our morning meeting is using the coveted microphone. I still get cheers every day when I pull out our microphone to get our meeting started.
We use the microphone as a talking piece. The student that has the microphone is the only student that is sharing at that time.
One of my favorite things about having circle time is watching my students, who are still learning the language, grow and develop confidence.
Students often begin the year with short and quick responses.
Slowly, we get to see their personalities shine as they open up to share more.
By the end of the year, those shy and quiet students are adding to the classroom chatter.
Students Learn & Build Connections
Use a new question each day to help learn more about your students.
Each month has a new theme for the season.
My students are able to build relationships and make connections based on topics that they hear discussed in our meeting.
As a teacher, I’m also able to connect with my students by using common interests in my lessons and examples.
When I hear many students talking about going to the same movie over the weekend, I’m able to sprinkle in some of those details into my math lesson to help peak their interests.
Discussions during morning meetings have often helped facilitate new bonds and friendships between students who were once unlikely duos.
Students are able to find new things that they have in common with their classmates on a daily basis.
Students Practice Accountable Talk
Teachers are always looking for ways to practice accountable talk in the classroom.
With our daily questioning, students are asked to justify their responses starting from day one.
Students are able to transfer their justification skills over to other academic subjects.
By sharing and making personal connections each morning, the students that are growing in their language skills become more confident to speak because they build trust and respect from their peers over time.
Digital Morning Questions
Recently, my students participated in our morning meeting digitally. I used Google Slides to share each question with my students.
They were able to type their responses and share them with me and their peers. We loved being able to have some consistency in our routine.
Circling up with my students and learning about what they know and love has become one of my favorite parts of the day.
Use a morning meeting to build a trusting classroom community.
Give students an opportunity to practice language development.
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