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Morning Meeting
Morning Meeting is a
regular part of our preschool day. It's primary purpose is to be a time of
community building. We have a special group meeting area in our classroom
at our big rug. The rug sits in front of the large dry erase board in
my room. Each child has his or her own spot to sit at the rug. My rug has
pictures around the edges so it makes it easy for me to direct the children
is they are not on their spot. I a\can simply say, "Joey sit on the
bike" and Joey knows he needs to go back to his spot, it is very
concrete.
Here we gather to
"greet" each other and carryout other components of the morning
meeting. Our greeting consists of either a hello song, a hand shake, or a
name game.
We choose a "star
student" every day. I have all the kid's names written on "Star
Student Stickers." The kids do a "drum roll" and then I just pull one
out each day. When we get through everyone we start again.
That student has the job of leading the meeting.
They get to use the pointer and point to the calendar as the kids say the
name of the month, sing the days of the week, and count the numbers to
figure out the date. They also get to "check the mail."
At the
start of the week we have a "letter" in the mailbox. (I use the
blue Step Two mailbox.) In it is our letter of the week. I just put a letter
from a bulletin board set and then we add it to our "Letter Word
Wall."
Then we read the
morning message. Often I have a chart or graphing activity for them
to complete as they come in the classroom, we would discuss it at this
time too. Many times the chart or graph asks the kids a question that
pertains to the unit of study we are doing. For example, when we were
learning about the ocean I asked the kids to write their name on the chart
next to their favorite ocean animal.
The second half of our week the star student gets to find
the letter bucket for the letter of the week and we look at all the things
in the bucket that start with that letter. (We have the alphabet buckets
that Lakeshore Learning sells.)
We do a shared writing activity
and the kids list words that start with the letter of the week and I write
them on chart paper. Later we hang the list next to the letter of the week
on the word wall.
This is also a time for
sharing, singing song and doing fingerplays.
We close our meeting by doing
a count down to Story Time.
The Morning Meeting is
practiced in many classrooms across the nation! It is a huge movement to
have more Responsive Classrooms that help children develop a sense of
community.
Learn more about the
Responsive Classroom approach at their website: http://www.responsiveclassroom.org/index.html
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This is the ultimate
book for learning to do Morning Meetings!
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A must
have additional resource for using Morning Meeting Greetings.
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A must
have additional resource for using Morning Meeting Messages.
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use these pointers all the time for Messages, song charts, and
calendar.
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Puppets
are great for creating interest and gaining attention during
Morning Meetings.
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This is
such a fun microphone. I use it to invite the children to Morning
Meetings, Story Time, and for other fun things like celebrating
birthdays!
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| Great for
writing Morning Messages on, song charts, and classroom graphs.
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You'll find dozen's of uses for these Easel Clips!
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I love my big easel, I use it all the time!
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