While time is limited in the upper elementary classroom, students greatly benefit from a routine focused on social-emotional development, character education, and a strong classroom community. While adding in morning meetings can feel like something extra, morning meetings are an important addition to our daily schedule. These tips and tricks can help you become more committed to scheduling and maintaining your morning meetings!

Before you troubleshoot your schedule to include morning meetings, I think it is extremely important to know exactly WHY morning meetings are important. If you need clarity on why you should have morning meetings (or reasons to share with others that you are trying to convince), you’ll want to visit this blog post first.

HOW MUCH TIME DOES MORNING MEETING TAKE?

During the first few weeks of school, my morning meetings with read aloud and discussions may take up to an hour. I embed some of the lessons into my getting to know you activities and setting expectations routines. I can also incorporate some of the themes into readers workshop since each theme has a touchstone picture book and a long list of read aloud options.

Around the second week of school, our morning meetings are limited to 15-20 minutes. Because our discussions build on one another from meeting to meeting, 15-20 minutes is plenty of time. If you can only have morning meetings 2-3 days out of the week, I believe it still makes a strong impact on students and your classroom community. For a few years, I had a 15 minute block in the morning before my students went to special-area classes. I was able to get our unpacking and meeting at the carpet routines down and morning meeting was the perfect way to start our mornings.

WHEN DOES MORNING MEETING HAPPEN? 

While “Morning Meeting” is the perfect way to start the school day, sometimes schedules do not allow for meetings to be first thing in the morning {or even every day of the week}. In this case, I call it a “Community Meeting.” Find a time of the day that works for your schedule. Do you have a small window of time when students return from recess or a special area class? Will everyone be more motivated to get to your meeting space more quickly in the mornings if you are already in your chair ready to begin and inviting students to join you as soon as they get unpacked?

Students can grab their morning meeting notebooks and get started on a reflection page while waiting for classmates. This way, you can even get some personal time helping students as they work at the carpet and wait for you to begin your meeting. Some days, working at the meeting place with you and classmates may be all your meeting requires! Think of the organic discussions that will ensue about kindness, compassion, and perserverance as students are allowed to work with one another on the journal pages. If your schedule is tight, I encourage you to find creative ways to chisel out the time for morning meeting throughout your week.

CREATE HARD STOPS IN YOUR SCHEDULE.

One of the biggest questions I get about morning meetings is how to keep them to 15-20 minutes. I recommend that you create “hard stops” in your schedule. We already have these throughout our school day—a time when we must be lined up in order to get to lunch, recess, or special area classes on time; the time we must pack up because it’s time to go to buses and cars, the time we must stop working to transition to another station, etc.

You are capable of creating a hard stop for morning meeting. If fear of morning meetings running over into the next part of your schedule is holding you back, you’re going to have to get tougher and really stick to a hard stopping time. I know it's challenging to stop morning meetings, especially when the discussions are so good. I’ve definitely had mornings that either it went on past the time where we were supposed to stop, or the discussion was just so good that I had to ask the special area teacher for forgiveness and be okay that we were late to our class. But, if you are determined to stick to your “hard stopping” time (within reason), I think more often than not, you’ll find it easier to stick to your schedule.

PLAN FOR A SHORTER/LONGER MEETING RHYTHM

I know that a lot of us have to work around schedules that vary on different days of the week. If you are in this situation, I suggest that you go ahead and plan a flexible morning meeting schedule where you have a rhythm of short and long meetings. And, by “longer meetings,” I mean 15 minutes. I'm not talking about a marathon meeting. I'm talking about keeping your standard 15-20 minute meeting when possible, and then you have shorter meetings on the days you need to. Just go ahead and plan that upfront. If you know that Tuesdays are wacky, then make Tuesdays your five-minute day. Go ahead and plan for the rhythm of your schedule so that you don’t feel frustrated and constantly caught off guard by your lack of more time!

If you have spent the quality time upfront launching your morning meetings, shorter meetings as the year goes on (depending on your goals) will still feed your classroom community and allow your students to thrive.

A WARNING ABOUT DROPPING MORNING MEETINGS

I am personally convinced that dropping off from morning meetings altogether results in lost class time later on as student behavior and their treatment of one another declines and I have more issues to problem solve during my instructional time. It’s also important to keep top of mind that morning meetings structured around themes in literature help me meet many of my literacy objectives, so I never feel guilty about the class time used for morning meetings. When I set aside time for morning meeting in my daily schedule, I have to remember that I am not “giving up” class time for morning meeting. Morning meeting is giving meaningful class time to myself and my students.

Because I think it is so important to have morning meetings each and every day that you possibly can, I have some recommendations for 5-minute morning meetings that can ensure that you don’t drop your routine altogether when things get busy.

5-MINUTE MORNING MEETING IDEAS TO KEEP THE MOMENTUM GOING

If you are unable to have morning meeting every day, including those days that you suffer from interruptions to your regular schedule, here are some ideas for 5-minute morning meetings that will help you keep the momentum going:

1) FOCUS ON 1 OF THE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS OR JOURNAL ACTIVITIES

Each of my morning meeting theme units include a 4-quadrant discussion page with three discussion questions and space for an illustration. If you are short on time, having students respond to just one of those questions can create a quality 5-minute discussion. You can have students respond to the question, turn and talk to a neighbor, and then compile responses onto an anchor chart on the following day. It’s a great way to start your next lesson and already have students do some of the thinking you needed them to do.

Many of the journal pages included in my theme sets can be used for short morning meeting assignments. For example, students can create a symbol for friendship and work on their explanation. Although you may need to skip a longer meeting for that day, you can ensure that your students continue thinking about the topic.

2) SHOW A SHORT VIDEO OR SONG

Things come up throughout the school year---picture day, field trips, early release and other interruptions. Showing a short video or song from YouTube that’s related to our current theme (or a review of a previous theme) is my go to strategy on those crazier than normal days. I’ve shared a favorite YouTube video for each theme in this blog post, but there are thousands of other great ones out there if you do a quick search! I’ve often stumble upon some of the best videos this way. Students love to be engaged through video, so allow yourself the video option as a back-up plan when your day is packed to the brim.

A heartwarming and inspiring message or song is a great way to start your morning together. If your students LOVED a song or video that you have already shown, reward them by re-sharing it on a busy day so that you don’t drop this community-building time altogether. My go-to videos that I play again and again come from Kid President and the "One Day” Kindness Boomerang video/song. It’s impossible for your students to hear and view the messages you are trying to impart too many times this year! 

3) HAVE SUPPLEMENTAL, SUPER-SHORT READ-ALOUDS ON HAND

A supplemental read aloud is one that enhances the themes you have studied during your morning meetings, but not a text that you are using for the foundational study of your morning meeting theme. You won’t necessarily be studying your supplemental read alouds in detail, you probably won’t chart them for text to text connections, but you can use them when you are short on time and want to review or reiterate the messages and lessons you’ve discussed during morning meetings.

You can even collect a handful of those super-short read alouds to keep in a bin near your meeting carpet for days that you are short on time! (Need some recommendations? Click here.)

4) USE POETRY

Much in the same way you can read a super-short picture book as a supplemental read aloud, you can find poems that enhance your morning meeting topics. If you pick up any collection of poems written for elementary students, you are sure to find your morning meeting themes popping in and out. Some of my favorite poets for upper elementary students are Judith Viorst (you know, the author of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day?), Shel Silverstein, Kalli Dakos, Langston Hughes, and Jack Prelutsky. Two of my favorite poetry collections by Judith Viorst are Sad Underwear and Other Complications and If I were in Charge of the World and Other Worries, and both of the poems that are the namesakes of those books are PERFECT for quick morning meeting discussions! Because poetry is so full of feeling and emotion, you are sure to find that many morning meeting themes (and topics relevant to your students) pop up in poems.

5) REFLECT ON PERSONAL OR WHOLE-CLASS GOALS

Goal setting and reflection are embedded into my morning meeting routines. At the beginning of a morning meeting unit, students self-reflect and set a personal goal. With themes like “sense of belonging,” kindness, compassion, growth mindset, conflict, perseverance (and many more!), it’s easy to see how impactful it would be to have students set personal goals related to those topics. When we are wrapping up our theme unit , students return to those goals to reflect on how well they achieved their goal and what steps they may need to take as we move on to another theme.

What does this have to do with a 5-minute morning meeting?

Although goal setting and reflection is embedded into our routines as we start and end our unit, I’m not always good at having students return to their goals regularly to see how they are doing and make sure they are on track to improve in that area. Returning to their goals is the PERFECT thing to have in our back pockets on days that we only have a few minutes to connect students to the morning meeting topic we are studying. And, having them review their goals and discuss strategies they’ve tried can really set everyone’s day off on a positive note!

Start small and believe it is worth your time!

DOWNLOAD YOUR FIRST MORNING MEETING UNIT FREE!

This free theme unit is packed with lesson ideas, student journal pages, discussion prompts, self-reflections, bulletin board materials, and more. YES! Everything you see below for the belonging theme is FREE!

If you need resources for virtual morning meetings or remote learning, I’ve got you covered with Google Slides versions of each theme set. Grab your FREE slides for belonging here.

My morning meeting routine is based on themes in literature. My morning meeting model is a routine classroom experience that allows  students the opportunity to develop personally, academically, and socially through the use of self-reflection, read alouds, songs, videos, quotations, key vocabulary, classroom discussions, and the teacher as a trusted guide. 

Each element of the framework works to create a theme-study while at the same time teaching social emotional skills, character education, and strengthening the classroom community. The 5 phases of the framework include:

• Exposure/Launching the Theme (without coming right out and telling students what the theme is)

• Introducing the Theme, Self-Reflection, and Goal Setting

• Student Discussion

• Building the Theme

• Consolidating Learning, Reflecting, and Creating Closure

Materials and resources for each of these components are included in each theme unit.

THEMES TO GUIDE YOUR MORNING MEETINGS ALL YEAR LONG

If you’d like more social emotional theme units with a focus on encouraging students’ social, emotional, and academic success, you may be interested in the Morning Meeting Mega Bundle of 17 theme units. With units focused on kindness, compassion, growth mindset, gratitude, perseverance, responsibility, managing emotions, and so much more, your engaging morning meeting plans are done for you and your students will love them! You can save 10% on the Mega Bundle of all 17 themes with the code MM10.

I would love to hear the creative ways you come up with to fit Morning Meeting in your schedule in the comments below!