how to run Morning Meeting in a Special Education Classroom
Today’s post is going to be about morning meeting in a special education classroom. Morning meeting is one of my favorite times in the classroom because we all come together to greet one another. Sometimes the natural conversations that spark during morning meeting are some of the best we have as a class.
What is Moring Meeting?
Morning meeting is the first thing that happened every single day in my classroom. In primary grades, some classrooms may refer to morning meeting as circle time. They are the same thing, just a different name. Because I taught older students, I felt it more appropriate to be called morning meeting. We start morning meeting in the beginning of the school year and continue through to the end of the school year.
When they walk into the classroom students put their belongings away in their lockers, check their schedules and sit at their desks. Morning meeting is a 15 minute whole group activity, that in my option, starts out the day in a fun way! While I am conducting morning meeting with the students, my staff quickly checks my students backpacks for any home/school communication, homework and snacks/lunches. This helps set us up to be successful in the day. Staff members also use this time to make sure any computers, technology or tools needed for morning work centers are ready to go for the day. This eliminates any down time in the classroom and minimizes any bored behaviors. When making your master schedule, it’s important to schedule task for all staff members throughout the day so everyone is being utilized throughout the day.
Why is morning meeting beneficial?
Morning meeting is a great way to build social skills and a variety of life skills to start the day. It is my favorite time of day because its a slow and intentional start to our day. My morning meeting activities change daily but also follow the same routine each day. To start off morning meeting, we sing goodmornig songs. There are a variety of morning songs that I have found over the years on Spotify, Apple Music and You Tube. If you have an interactive whiteboard, you can play some YouTube morning dance/brain break videos to start the day if you want to get some movement in.
Taking Attendance
Following a song or two, I begin to call students to the front of the classroom one by one. This is my way of taking attendance and greeting students. Students “check in” on my morning meeting bulletin board. This helps students practice name recognition and also help students learn the skill of signing in. I simply have my student names attached to the board using velcro so students could easily manipulate the board themselves. They find their name and add it to the “present” section. If a student is absent my morning meeting helper will add the name to the “assent” section. This could also be done using magnets on a white board. I also like to change it up throughout the year. Sometimes I use student pictures, (real pictures) to add variety. Students get excited when they see their peers pictures up on the bulletin board.
Once the student signs in to school for the day, we greet the student with a whole class “good morning (student name).” After all the students have been accounted for, we say good morning to each staff member one by one. I think its important to include staff in routines like this, because they are apart of the class as well. It is also helpful when you have substitute para professionals to get to know the kids at this time too.
Morning Greeting
Once students have checked in, they get to choose which greeting they want to give me from the visual choices posted on my bulletin board. Students can choose from a variety of greetings: shake hands, say hi, give a high five, wave, fist bump or hug. I have the greeting choices posted on the morning meeting bulletin board. Greetings are paired with visual cues to help students become independent within the morning meeting routine. By allowing the students to choose their greeting, you are also given a chance to quickly assess how they are feeling to start off the day. Students typically have a lot of fun picking out which greeting they want to give each day.
Teaching students how to greet peers is one of those basic skills that often get overlooked in the classroom. When you think about any one greeting, you can forget how many steps go into a successful greeting. If you want direct instruction or visual steps to various greetings, check out my greetings visuals HERE. These visuals provide step by step instructions for how to properly offer a hug, wave, handshake, high five, fist bump or verbally saying hi.
Like I mentioned above, I like to change morning meeting up often to keep it exciting for kids. One way I will shake up our morning meeting routine is change who gets to greet each kid for the morning. Sometimes I will pick a staff member or a different student. I’ve even had parent volunteers in the classroom for different reasons, and when available I will have them greet each kid. Simple changes like this makes it fun, different but also maintains the same consistent routine within the school day which allows students to be successful.
Morning Meeting Discussions
In morning meeting, we also work on answering simple questions. I created a simple binder with visual cues to help students answer basic questions. I used this once or twice a week to build communication skills within the classroom. This serves as a daily check in to see how students are feeling. We work on speaking with our big voice and maintaining eye contact. Simple skills that need a lot of practice.
The last question in my binder is “what sensory activity would you like to do?” Here I have real picture choices of a few activities they can have in the classroom. Some examples of choices I provide are 10 jumps on the trampoline, 5 bounces on a bouncy ball, 8 spins on the dizzy disc etc. I rotate the choices for this depending on what I want to allow for that particular morning. I have a list of some of my favorite sensory tools for the classroom listed HERE in my amazon storefront.
If you want to grab these morning meeting visuals, you can grab my morning meeting visual resource HERE.
Daily Overview
Once all of the students have been greeted and checked in, this is a time I like to quickly review the daily schedule. All students are in their seats facing the front of the room, so I can quickly review the daily schedule. I keep my whole class visual schedule posted in the front of the room. This could also be done verbally if you do not use a visual schedule in the classroom. A brief run down is always helpful. It is beneficial to prepare students for any specials or out of the ordinary activities that may take place for the day.
Whole Group Lesson
While you have your whole class together, it might be a good opportunity to transition into a whole group lesson. You can also choose to use this time to review any classroom rules or expectations for the class. I stored my classroom rules in the front of the room. This way, they can easily be referenced throughout the day as needed. I would often times use my interactive white board and project any big topics we are currently learning for a two minute review as a whole class. This could be something related to a holiday coming up, classroom theme or behavior basics theme for the week.
If your classroom does a letter or number of the week, this could be a great transition into that. Same goes for color or shape of the week. My students were older and this was not part of my curriculum. After morning meeting we transitioned directly into work center rotations where they got their instruction.
Calendar Skills
Some classrooms choose to do Morning Meeting/Circle time and Calendar time at the same time. There is no right or wrong way to structure your day. For me, I found it better to break them up into two different chunks of the day. My students thrived with a variety of whole group and small group activities. By breaking up calendar and morning meeting, they were given the opportunity to do whole group activities twice during the day.
For an in-depth look at my calendar routine, click HERE. Calendar activities can vary depending on the need of your students. For me, differentiating calendar was key to student success. All students need to learn the days of the week, months of the year ands seasons. Some students thrived using interactive calendar books while others used a simple calendar mat. To see more calendar materials I used in the classroom, click HERE.
Morning Meeting Tour
I have an in depth walk through tour showing you how I run my morning meeting in my classroom. If you prefer to watch my routine, click HERE to be taken to my you tube video!
Morning Meeting Videos
I wanted to share with you some of my favorite you tube videos that can be used in your morning meeting routine.
Do you want music for your morning meeting routine? Here are some good morning songs to start the day:
Are you working on greetings? Here are some greeting songs to start the day:
Do you want your kids up and moving? Here are some movement videos to start the day:
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