Morning meetings are designated daily meetings to meet with your students to help build community in the classroom and set up for a successful day. You can call it a Daily Check-In or Circle Time, but they all promote the same idea.
Morning meetings are helpful in order to transition students from home to class to boost learning. You greet your students and encourage them to say hello to the neighbor or a new friend. Teachers generally ask a question so students can share about themselves and get to know their classmates. Morning meetings build community in the classroom, encourage listening, and establish understanding, respect, and common ground for all students. After everyone has a chance to share, you wrap up the meeting reviewing class rules and cover the schedule for the day.
This is also a great tool for teachers to use to do an emotional check in to see which students may need extra support. Teachers might notice when a student is acting grumpy or shy and then they will know to check on them more throughout the day.
Meetings can be used in classrooms for all ages, although they are most popular with elementary learners. They typically last for 15 to 20 minutes which gives the teacher the perfect amount of time to check attendance and get the first lesson all set up. :)
They are not only for a brick and mortar classroom, you can hold virtual morning meetings as well. Similar to doing them in class, you greet, ask a question, share, and then cover important topics for the day.
Wherever you teach, having morning meetings can help you in so many ways. Here are 7 reasons why you should hold meetings in your class:
#1 Morning meetings promote strong relationships. By holding meetings every morning you are setting aside time to have conversations with your students everyday. You get to know them and they learn to trust you because you genuinely care about them. Students also get to learn about their classmates which builds their social skills and helps them make friends in the classroom.
#2 Morning meetings can help learners how to problem solve. During morning meetings students can learn to problem solve which is such a great life skill. Throughout life people are always going to be in a situation where they have to problem solve, for example how to handle a disagreement with a friend. Teaching students how to do this early on with small instances like a struggle on the playground can give them a toolkit to solve big problems later in life.
#3 Excellent time to work on Social Emotional skills. It is so easy to integrate SEL (Social Emotional Learning) into morning meetings. You can talk about empathy, kindness, respect, and friendship. You can introduce concepts like Mindfulness teach calming strategies to help learners regulate their emotions.
#4 Morning meetings can be used for an Emotional Check In. A daily meeting can be time for you to check in with each student in a simple way. They can share about how they are feeling on a number scale 1 to 5. You can switch it up and use topics like the weather, for example sunshine would be happy, fog could be sleepy, and cloudy could be sad.
#5 Morning meetings can be used to introduce or review academic skills. Morning meetings are the perfect time to tap into prior knowledge and see what your learners know about a new topic. You can also review previous topics to see what you might need to review if some students are still struggling.
#6 Morning meetings can be used to teach the importance of diversity. One of my favorite things to teach during a morning meeting is the importance of diversity. It is so easy to showcase everyone’s differences during meetings and reinforce that it is ok to be different. When you are sharing make sure to set boundaries to not allow anyone to make fun of others in your class. This lets everyone know that your classroom is a safe place.
It may seem like a struggle to try to fit ONE MORE THING into your already busy teacher schedule but the positives of having a quick meeting everyday really benefit your class in the long run. (and like I said earlier you can use this time to check roll or drink your coffee while it is still hot)
If you need some ideas for holding meetings in your class I have created some slides that will make your planning easier. Go check them out here or at The Celebrated Classroom on our website.