Start Your Morning off Right With Morning Meetings

If you are looking to bring calm to the chaos that is morning and that very first block of time with your students, look no further. I've got you covered. Let's talk all about morning meeting. When I first started in the self-contained setting, I underestimated the impact that structure and routine to my morning would have on the rest of my day. The fact was, when I had a smooth and seamless morning, Everything else just seemed to fall into place. My students knew what to expect, they had a calm start to the day, and we set the tone for the rest of the school day. So how do you do that? Simple. Morning meeting. Let me show you. There are 3 components to our morning meeting. The first one is what everyone thinks of, this digital version of our morning meeting. Then we have student workbooks. Then we have bulletin board pieces. These can be used together or individually or a combination of any of them. Here are some of the components Morning Meeting comes with. First of all, you have student workbooks. So if you want your students to follow along from the digital version to the book or even the bulletin board version, let's say you don't have a digital board in your classroom, you have these great schedule pieces, these mini schedules that go along with this, and these are completely interactive. These match identically the digital version and then also the bulletin board version. So you could just do this book if you wanted, you could do the book and the digital combination, or you could do the digital and the bulletin board. You can mix and match it honestly however you want, but this is the best. I literally love this. Students, you can use a dry erase marker to be able to identify. So functional, so easy. So you have a student workbook, you also have that mini schedule that I showed you, and then, um, you have bulletin board pieces because, well, sometimes students do better without technology, or you need a low-tech option. Maybe you're running this in a small group and you don't have the ability to put this on a Promethean board or a Smartboard. So we give you big giant arrows so you can choose. There's even titles that match the book and of course the symbols. So one of my favorite things about this is that the symbols will match in the book, so your students already know where to go. So when we're talking about greetings, this is what we're going to look for. This is their schedule piece, and of course this matches here. And guess what? The digital matches as well. Such a cool way to be able to incorporate all of these pieces, but of course, let's dig into the digital. Now I'm running this on an iPad, but any device where you can get to the internet will work. Touch is best, but you know, if you're going to use a mouse, you can use a mouse. It works. I absolutely do this on my laptop and it works just fine. And so you just click Start Morning Meeting. I'm in the primary version. So there are 4 different versions. There's a primary and elementary, a middle school and high school. The content of greeting, calendar, weather, and check-in stays the same. But what happens is that it becomes more age-appropriate content as we move through. So the videos will change, the imagery changes, but we're still working on really basic skills for that morning meeting kind of check-in. So here we're gonna talk about morning greetings. First of all, we're gonna have a hello song. You can choose from the 4. I'm gonna choose this one. Fantastic, you can see that automatically, you didn't have to touch anything, the mini schedule populates. Now, remember, we talked about this. This matches perfectly. How cool is that? And then of course, it matches the mini schedule here. So if your students need a visual for a mini schedule, you have it all built in. Your morning greeting, Morning greeting, everything aligns. So here you go, you've got your bulletin board, you've got your student workbook, you've got your digital piece. Use 1, 2, 3 all together, separate, it doesn't really matter. I've got my morning greeting, I'm gonna play my song, we're gonna go next. Each student then would come up to the board and maybe choose how they were going to greet their peers. If you wanted to practice with everyone, maybe you you have just one student who comes up and says that they're gonna pick, and today they're choosing waving. And of course, we've got the AAC represented down here because we wanna be super inclusive of those learners. They've got so much to say. We want to make sure that they've got a voice and they are represented as well. So, we've got our morning greeting. As we go through, we're gonna do the same thing for calendar. We choose, it auto-populates, it's ready to go. This very simply moves. We're going to say it's Tuesday, then we're going to say that it's Wednesday for today, and we're going to stay in full screen. Sorry for that iPad. And this just moves and becomes really, really functional to be able to maneuver. Now you can see this is kind of little kid, right? But it's primary version. As we move to that high school, middle school version, the imagery shifts and changes. Of course, we've got the calendar date. We've got weather as we move through, and you can very simply just choose this as we move through. It becomes really functional to be able to practice, you know, what should we wear today? Should it be hat and gloves? Should it be a coat? You can maneuver this, and your students can be doing the exact same thing. Now, when I taught in a primary classroom, this was the number one question: is recess inside or outside? Right? And of course, we have the visual to match. We have the visual to match. And there's actually big circles that you can cut out or arrows to be able to identify so that it's perfectly aligned. So you can identify that. And then of course, do I need a coat for recess? Yes or no, right? When I taught 5th grade, that was always the question. We end with an SEL check-in, just a general morning check-in. When I ran this in my classroom, I would have each student take a minute to come up and identify how they were feeling. We would sing that hello song or that check-in song, and then we would ask each student how they were feeling, and then we would validate those feelings as a group. We would talk about maybe where you go. If you're not going anywhere and you don't find value in this piece, you could just do the SEL check-in hit home and be done, right? Or let's say that one of your friends hits the home button, you need to go right back, it'll bounce you right where you were. So it becomes really, really functional and easy to use. We tried to be as inclusive as we could be. We know each school is unique in what they offer, and so we've got a special category if it doesn't quite line up with the traditional specials. And then we wrap up the end with, of course, "I Can Follow the Rules." Who doesn't love that song? Um, so fun, so interactive, so easy to use.