Morning Meetings

Once again here I am again talking about morning meetings, but every time I here someone talk about how morning meetings work so well in their class I just get so excited about it. Last week two teachers from the Wasatch School District discussed how they did their morning meetings. One of the teachers has done morning meetings every single day except maybe twice. The 1st grade teacher has not been as consistent because they do the immersion classes so she has to try to fit everything in. They showed us videos of their classroom doing morning meetings. I loved their class creeds that they did and I think I would want to find or come up with a class creed that they recite and that we discuss it in my class. The teacher who teaches the older grade had her class actually write their class creed. I thought that would be a great idea if I taught an older grade. These two teachers made such an influence on their district that now the Wasatch School District gives their new teachers a packet with morning meetings in it.

The following week, we got to hear from Jentry Youd about his experience with morning meetings. The way he does morning meetings is that they do a game for 10-15 minutes and then sharing for 10-15 minutes. Then they will discuss a goal to work on and see how their goal for the previous day was done. I like seeing how everyone does it differently and he stressed that you need to make morning meetings work for your personality. They aren't going to look the exact same for every teacher. Jentry also said that parents love morning meetings and that there will always be teacher that put you down for doing them. He also said that there will be days when you walk down the hall and see everyone else doing bell work and silent reading and will be tempted to do that instead because it is so much easier. I think that it would be easier, but our students will benefit so much from morning meetings. Another thing that stood out for me while he was talking to us was that his class is really close. They are the only class in the whole school that all get along. He doesn't have bullying problems or anything.

I seriously don't understand why people wouldn't want to do morning meetings in their classroom after they see all the benefits. I realize that they can take a lot of work, but we can keep them simple and they are just as affective.

He is a fun little video that Jentry talked about in class. He showed us a video of his class singing this song with different lyrics.