Morning meetings are a great way to start the day with your students. But, how do you keep your students engaged and excited to participate in the morning meeting routine? A great way to get your kids talking and making those important connections with their classmates is by asking open-ended questions. I love using questions as part of my morning meeting routine with my students, and they love it too. I am so excited to share some of my favorite ways to use morning meeting questions in your classroom this year.
What is a Morning Meeting?
A morning meeting is a dedicated time at the beginning of the school day for you and your students to communicate in a collaborative and engaging way.
It’s a time for you and your students to build important social connections with each other which helps set a positive tone for the entire day. It’s the perfect time to check in with students and get a “temperature check” of their social-emotional needs before starting any academic work.
As teachers, we know how important a consistent routine is for our students. A morning meeting is an easy way to get into a routine that’s beneficial for you and your students.
Morning Meetings set the Tone for Your Classroom
After introducing morning meetings during the first few days of school, my students understand the schedule and already know what to do when they walk into the classroom in the morning. A calm morning equals a calm and enjoyable day and that tone is set first thing in the morning.
When it comes to morning meetings, I like to set aside 10-15 minutes of our morning time to hear from each of my students.
I firmly believe morning meetings have a huge impact on my classroom community and they help me build relationships with all of my students.
Not only does it help me get to know my students and get a feel for how they are doing, but morning meetings also help my students practice those super important listening and speaking skills we work so hard on throughout the year.
Morning Meetings Don’t Have to be Complicated
I’m all about making things as easy and as efficient as possible in my classroom. And, morning meetings are no exception. I think it’s important for my energy to be spent on my students not on prepping for the morning meeting.
That’s why I like to use digital morning meeting questions. It’s so simple for me to project the questions on the whiteboard as students are arriving for the day, putting away their backpacks, and working on morning work.
It also allows them to read the question and think about their answers while we wait for the day to begin.
Running Smooth Morning Meetings
Morning meetings aren’t just a time to sit all of your students down and ask, “How are you doing today?”. You will likely end up with all kinds of responses from what they ate for breakfast to the name of their favorite tv character to the time they got gum stuck in their hair. Things can spiral out of control quickly when you don’t have a plan in place. That’s why the digital morning meeting questions are so important.
When it’s time to begin our morning meeting, I call everyone to the carpet where we can all sit together in a circle. I emphasize the importance of giving everyone a chance to speak and making eye contact while listening.
I take the time to read the morning meeting question and ask for a student volunteer who would like to go first. If I don’t have any brave souls, I will go first and that usually breaks the ice for the rest of the class. After the first few weeks though, this generally isn’t an issue because we’ve worked so hard to build trust and respect for one another.
What if I Don’t Do Morning Meetings?
If morning meetings just aren’t your thing, that’s okay! You can use these digital morning meeting questions as a fun and easy way to take attendance. Instead of shouting out “Here!” students can call out their answer to the morning meeting question.
You can also post the morning question and have students move a magnet with their name on it to their answer. Then you can quickly and easily take attendance by looking to see who hasn’t moved their name. To expand on your morning question you can use the student answers to do some graphing and data analysis, create and put lists in alphabetical order and so much more. At the end of the morning meeting, move all students’ names back to the starting space and you are all ready for the next day’s attendance.
You can also use the morning meeting questions at the end of the day. Just project the question at the end of the day as students are packing up.
Then, as they are leaving the classroom for the day, each student can take a minute to tell you their answer to the question.
Digital Morning Meeting Questions for the Whole Year!
Instead of trying to plan out themes and questions each week or month, let me do it for you. You can grab a whole year’s worth of morning meeting questions in the Digital Morning Meeting Questions Yearlong Bundle!
It includes an engaging morning meeting question for you to project through PowerPoint or Google Slides for each day of the school year. Grab your Digital Morning Meeting Questions Yearlong Bundle today and use it for years to come!
Save These Morning Meetings Ideas!
Pin these morning meeting ideas to your favorite classroom Pinterest board so you can come back for more classroom ideas!
