Morning Meeting

Today in class was so awesome. 

We were able to hear from Sylvia Allan. 
She talked to us about Morning Meeting.
 I'm not going to lie, when we first started learning about Morning Meeting in class I was very skeptical about it. I thought it sounded like a fun idea but not something that I would actually take the time to implement in my classroom. 

After today I might just be changing my mind.

What exactly is Morning Meeting you ask? Let me tell you!

 Morning Meeting is an engaging way to start each day, build a strong sense of community, and set children up for success socially and academically. Each morning, students and teachers gather together in a circle for twenty to thirty minutes and interact with one another during four purposeful components:

• Greeting students and teachers greet one other by name and practice offering hospitality.
• Sharing students share information about important events in their lives. Listeners often offer empathetic comments or ask clarifying questions.
• Group activity everyone participates in a brief, lively activity that fosters group cohesion and helps students practice social and academic skills (for example, reciting a poem, dancing, singing, or playing a game that reinforces social or academic skills).
• Morning message students read and interact with a short message written by their teacher. The message is crafted to help students focus on the work they'll do in school that day.

Sylvia was amazing. She had so much great insight and ideas for making Morning Meeting important and appropriate. I don't know how well I will do with Morning Meetings, but I absolutely want to give them a shot in my classroom and see how well my students respond to them. Click here or here for links to some other great sites full of ideas for Morning Meetings.

Goodnight,

Laurel (like Carl)