If you do morning meeting in third grade, what do you do? I did a lot with my second graders last year but I feel like it was too long and not all necessary for this year. I'm just curious what you do...it'll help me plan for Sept.
I think I did too much with calendar...I know its useful but we went over the date, the month, the days of the week, counting in Spanish up to the date and what special subject we have that day. I just felt like it took a really long time and the kids seemed to get lost through it, and we weren't even into weather, the character ed quote of the month, or our Alliance for Peace and Justice pledge. :-( My morning meetings usually went about 40 minutes, and I simply won't have that amount of time with my schedule this year:-(
I'm with you. I did first the year before last and 2nd last year. My morning meeting/calendar took forever. In 1st grade and for the 1st 3 quarters of 2nd it took almost 40 minutes which was way too much. We did all of the things you described. For the last quarter of 2nd I narrowed it down to days of the week, months of the year, weather, student pledge, teacher pledge, Pledge of Allegiance, and some quick place value and graphing questions. We were down to 20 minutes by the end. This was a much more manageable (sp?) time. For 3rd grade I'm not planning on doing much other than Pledge of Allegiance, student pledge, teacher pledge and Character Ed. I'm hoping to keep it to 15 min.
I did morning meeting last year in my 3rd grade class, and we kept it pretty simple: we started out with a greeting of some kind, sharing, a whole group game or activity, and then any news or important info about the day. Towards the end of the year, it ended up being mostly just sharing. I didn't do it every day because my schedule would not allow it, but the kids LOVED it and would ask me constantly if we were going to have it that day. Check out The Morning Meeting Book by Roxann Kriete and Lynn Bechtel, as it details specifically morning meeting, as well as has many, many ideas of greetings, activities, etc. Hope that helps!
I don't do any calendar. I do use the Morning Meeting Book mentioned above. This is how my meeting looks. We sit in a circle, and each child greets the person next to them in some way. We go around in the circle beginning with one of the kids next to me. They handshake, give hi-fives, sometimes we use Mr. or Miss, use greetings from around the world, etc. After greetings, I say good morning to them. I ask if anyone has anything important to share, and write their name under "sharing" on the agenda. We then do some kind of activity. This is usually a mental math game of some kind. I have a list, and I do different ones each day. I do some making/building words games... it depends on the day. I don't do both math and language each day. I alternate. I often have a story to read. These are relating to social studies or science most of the time. I don't have time to read stories relating to these topics during the short time we have other times of day for the subjects. *About the greetings: They can be long (5 or more minutes) when we don't have time, we do "invisible greetings" "warm fuzzy greetings" and "speedy greetings" Invisible, they close their eyes for one second and pretend to greet, warm fuzzy, they give themselves a hug and speedy, they talk so fast you can't understand them. It's like "bzzzb" and takes about 1 minute for the whole class to greet. The other ones take like 10 seconds for the whole group. Greetings can get tedious, and I only really do them for half the year. They often will ask for them though after the winter break, and we do them on Monday most weeks. We then do sharing. Most of the times it's a "talk sharing" but sometimes someone has brought something important from home. Most kids want a chance to bring their pets at some point during the year. Other things that happen at Morning Meeting: Discussing rules, problems, conflicts, social skills, behavior Community Building activities Planning events and activities (when the kids want to have a bake sale, plan a party, etc.) We use different discussion techniques at this time, such as talking sticks, 30 seconds to talk, 5 sticks, etc. I found a great book called, What Would You Do? (Link Below) Discussing these questions with the kids was great. http://www.amazon.com/What-Would-Yo...7033263?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1185419838&sr=8-2 Next year I will add the following: -Current events about once a week -Looking at the national weather (charting or graphing, predicting, using the newspaper, geography, math, and so on.) -How are you feeling check-ins (saw that on this board somewhere, kids can take a koosh ball of different colors and each represents a feeling. I am going to use craft pom-poms) I do a 10-15 minute closing meeting, and in that, the kids share thank you's and compliments and each child has a reflection time to think about various questions such as: what challenged you today, what is something you learned, were proud of, wonder about, etc. Sometimes I give little oral quizzes at this time too, like "tell me one thing you learned about---" no one can repeat the same thing. I would say abotu 40 minutes a day (30 in am, 10 in pm more or less) is devoted to morning and closing meeting, but WELL worth it. The kids create a real community and we do cover a lot of academic skills during this time. It's a good way for me to assess them. I do a lot of mental math and things at those times.
Wow, I love all the different ideas. I definitely see how it could take up a lot of time, but also provide lots of teachable moments.
i would love to do a class meeting of sorts but find it so hard to fit into my jam packed day...it is something that my kids desperately need but i just don't find the time...last year i use to bring my kids back early from lunch and we would do it quickly then but i didn't feel it was enough!!
Does anyone use Saxon Math? I know they have a built in Morning Meeting. I've used it before(about 3 years ago) and as I recall it did take a long time. I am returning to 3rd after teaching 5-8 Departmental.(I'm at a new school, too)and Iknow they also used a problem of the day. My question for that is: Should these problems of the day be graded or just checked for completion. I am thinking I will provide folders for everyone to store them in, collect the folders once a week(after daily going over the answers) and give a participation grade of a few points if they are all completed. Does this sound logical? I am really overwhelmed at the moment.:thanks:
