Starting Your Day Off on the Right Track (freebie)
Starting your day off with a positive tone is so important in a classroom. Some of your students may not have that at home, so it is nice if you can provide that. Last year, I began each day with a morning meeting and it was a great start to our day. I found that our class was more connected with each other.
Morning Meetings
Before I started morning meetings, I read the book The Morning Meeting Book and it was great!
I went in with the mindset that I would stick with it no matter what. And I will be honest, there were times when I wanted to throw morning meetings out the door. I either wasn’t in the mood or I wanted to get started with my day. But, I held strong and stuck with it. I truly feel it helped my class so much. I had some big challenges in my class, but setting a positive tone really helped.
If you are not familiar with morning meetings, there are four main components- greeting, share, group activity, and morning message.
I made this little poster to remind me of the order. My students were great, they were quick to remind me if I went out of order, ha! You can grab this freebie below.
DOWNLOAD MORNING MEETING FREEBIE
More Morning Meeting Resources
In time, I also purchased these books 80 Morning Meeting Ideas and 99 Activities and Greetings for greeting, share, and group activity ideas. They were also very helpful.
Besides a positive start to the day, the other thing I love about morning meetings was the practice of social skills. When we greeted each other, we practice eye contact. We practiced sharing in complete sentences. And we practiced active listening.
Partner Cards
Sometimes we do a group activity in that partners are needed, so I made up some partner cards. These were a big hit. They had to find their “match” to complete the group activity. I changed them up throughout the year to incorporate some standards we were working on.
Do you do morning meetings in your classroom? What are some of your favorite activities?