The Power of Classroom Morning Meetings

I LOVED this article! It was really interesting to see morning meetings from this teacher's perspective and how she believes that it is actually the cause of her students doing well on the ITBS. It gave me a lot of great ideas. I will use morning meetings in my class. I remember when I was in elementary school and had morning meetings and how fun I thought they were. It really is a time for students to interact with each other and I agree with everything she said like how it gives them confidence and they are able to work on many social and academic skills without actually sitting down and realizing that they are working on something school related. They just look at it as a time to have fun and get to know each other and I also thought she brought up a good point when she said that it makes them more tune, awake, and ready for reading instruction. I never thought of that, but I could totally see how that would make sense. I have been in classes where they come in the door and read silently for the first 20 minutes of class. It is always hard for them to stay silent for that long and focus right at the beginning of the day. Many of them have things they wanna share from their personal lives with the class and just wanna talk to each other for the first few minutes of the day. I also LOVE how she puts them in charge and chooses different people to lead the greeting, sharing, group activity, and the announcement. Most kids love to have the opportunity to be in charge of something and this is a great way to get them all involved. I have heard many testomonies about morning meetings and I really do feel that they work and are worth the time. I can see how most teachers dont wanna take the time for them, because there is so much to do in a day that it's hard to take that long. In my class, I will always make it a point to do them, even if I have to cut it short and it is only a few minutes. I am excited to see morning meetings in action and get more ideas! :)