My Morning Meeting Toolbox

Do you do a morning meeting in your classroom?? If you don't you should! It's a great opportunity to build community in your classroom, practice social skills, and even sneak in some content in fun ways! At our school all grades are expected to have one so you can make it work no matter the age.

I've had a little caddy with some of my morning meeting essentials sitting right by my chair since I started teaching and it started to grow out of control! I needed more space! So I revamped mine this year and thought I'd share with you some of my goodies that help me and my students run a successful morning meeting.

We use both the bean bag and the ball for games and greetings that involve tossing. Such games include:

• Ball Toss Greeting: Simply greet a person and then toss them the ball. Simple- but it's a favorite in our room. Perhaps its because after we do it, we do a silent rewind where we then have to toss it in the same order without talking or dropping it a certain # of times. 
• Snickerdoodle: About 5 students step out of the room. One student hides an object (we use the bean bag) somewhere in the room. Then we invite the 5 students back in and play a game of hot and cold by clapping fast when someone is close and clapping slow if they move farther away. Once one person sees the object, they come back to our circle, jump in the middle and yell "SNICKERDOODLE" and then they go point it out. Fun times.

These big foam dice are awesome for the dice greeting, where a student shakes 1 or 2 dice and then moves that many people around the circle, greets them, and then they switch places. Simple, but this is great to get your circle mixed up randomly as it's all by chance.

Speaking of switching things up, I sometimes use partner matching cards for share time to get students to share with others randomly. I keep them in a little zipper pouch. Also, if we have games that require cards (usually I have, Who has games) I keep these in the pouch too.

Cubes are another tool I use for share time. If they are separated, I use them as talking chips to balance the talking of everyone. However, you can also put them in rods of 5 (I vary the colors of the cubes) and use them to help students share "paragraph style." For example:

• I might have a stick of cubes with a green on one end, then 3 blue cubes, then one red cube. A student grabs the stick and uses it to talk through their share. They point to the green cube and share a topic sentence. Then they share 3 details, each time tapping a blue cube. They then tap the red cube and wrap up their share using a concluding sentence. Great way to teach a basic paragraph and its parts!

This is one of our favorite time fillers. We play a game called "Heads vs. Tails." I have students pick heads (they show by putting their hands on their head) or tails (they make a tail with their hands by their behinds). I say, "Lock it," which means they can't change their choice. I then flip the coin and if it lands on heads, all those with heads stay standing, while the others sit down. You can then keep going or make it interesting by letting those who are sitting continue to play. If they guess right, they get to stand up again. We do this for as long as I need to fill time sometimes.

These are a new addition this year, but I see them being very helpful for when we are reading our morning message.

Put students' names on them and use them as a "pick stick" for sharing or partnerships. I also use them to make games, especially around content. This was a "Buzz" game for traits where students had to either act it out or name a synonym/antonym for the trait word. I used to just wrap them in a rubber band (until all my rubber bands began to disintegrate) but I found this awesome pencil box from Target and they fit perfectly!

Surprisingly, there's lots of uses for this tool. You can use yarn or string to do greetings like "Spider Web" but I like using these tape measures because they don't get tangled. We use them for measuring games like when we make paper airplanes and fly them. Also, they make great straight lines for activities like limbo or "take sides."

I keep all my goodies now in this shower caddy from Target. It sits right on the floor next to my chair. It's also awesome when I have a sub, because all they need is in one place.

What are some of your "musts" for your Morning Meeting? I'd love to add to my caddy!