Morning Meeting Activities for Distance Learning

Designed for Distance Learning (Zoom and Google Meet)

Hi everyone, and welcome back to EdTech Classroom. Today we will discuss some tips and tricks for planning the perfect online Morning Meeting. More specifically, this blog post will outline (1) ideas for establishing Morning Meeting Agreements, (2) examples of slides you can share with your students, and (3) examples of engaging Morning Meeting activities.

Establishing Morning Meeting Agreements

Before I start online Morning Meeting, I like to remind my students of our established Morning Meeting agreements. These include:

• Video calling from a productive space
• Being prepared and ready for the meeting
• Being on time
• Turning on your video
• Muting yourself when you aren’t speaking
• Raising your hand before you speak

For a more detailed description of strategies for establishing Morning Meeting agreements and rules, you can check out my previous blog post here.

Creating Engaging Morning Meeting Slides

I am a big fan of Responsive Classroom, so I follow their structure for Morning Meetings. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Responsive Classroom, don’t worry – I’ll walk you through a sample online Morning Meeting using this format.

While waiting for your students to arrive, I recommend screensharing a cheery image with the day of the week on it. It’s a great way to set the tone for the meeting.

Greeting

Then once everyone has entered the Zoom Meeting Room, you can begin by saying something like, “Good Morning friends! Today is a rainy Monday. It is April 27, 2020. Nina is our morning leader. Nina, how will we greet the class today?”

Typically our students will opt for the same greetings. For example, we might all do a dance move to greet each other, or we will do a virtual wave greeting.

Share

Then, we will move onto the share portion of the Morning Meeting. I really like the “Rose, Bud, and Thorn” share because it allows students to reflect on how they are feeling. It is a great idea to start with the meeting leader, and then to draw popsicle sticks to call on students. Or, if you’re using a platform like Zoom, you can call on students in the order that they appear on your “Brady Bunch grid.”

Activity

Next, it is my favorite part of Morning Meeting – activity time! Students love to do freeze dances, scavenger hunts, movement activities, and more. The ideas are really endless in terms of the types of activities you can do with your students to start the day. Here is an example of an activity that many students think is really silly.

Morning Message

For the last part of our Morning Meeting, we will share the morning message. This portion of the meeting is a great time to introduce an academic or social emotional topic that your students will explore that day. For example, you could introduce a math lesson, a writing prompt, or even a tech tool they will use that day. The example below states, “Today is Monday April 27, 2020. We cannot believe that it is the last week of April. Today we will have math class from ______ to ______.”

In an activity like this, I’d recommend asking a couple of questions like, “What time does math class start? What time does math class end? How long is math class? And, how do you know?” In this example, I have chosen to do a mini math lesson, but as I mentioned, you can also be creative here. The morning message is a great tool to help jumpstart their day of learning.

Examples of Fun and Meaningful Morning Meeting Activities for Distance Learning

When it comes to games you can play with your students during Morning Meeting, the options truly are endless. Morning Meeting games are a great way to build classroom community during this period of remote learning. Morning Meeting activities help unite your students, and give them that sense of connection and belonging that they need during this difficult time.

I’ve put together a list of a few examples of activities you can do with your students during Morning Meeting on Zoom or Google Meet:

Guess Who!

“Let’s play Guess Who! Take turns asking me questions until you guess who I am. Hint: I am someone in this class.”

Basically for this idea, the teacher just mentally picks a student in the class, and then students ask questions to try to guess who the teacher chose. For example, a student might ask, “does you have brown hair?” Or, “do you have a pet cat?”

Emoji Charades

“Let’s play emoji charades. Take turns acting out an emotion or an emoji. Make sure you don’t use any words or sounds!”

This is a fun activity that also allows kids to practice some social emotional skills like identifying different emotions.

Scavenger Hunt

“Let’s play scavenger hunt! You have 3 minutes to find these items:

1. Find something fuzzy
2. Find something sparkly
3. Find something that makes you smile”

Scavenger hunts are pretty popular in the Instagram teacher community right now, and that’s for a reason! They are so much fun to try out with students. Consider screensharing a digital timer to really build up the excitement.

Other games you could try:

If you didn’t want to use these examples, there are plenty of other games you could play with your students like Freeze Dance, Red Light Green Light, and Student (Simon) Says.

If you like these ideas, consider checking out my Morning Meeting Bundle filled with over 40 Morning Meeting Games and Activities for Distance Learning on Zoom and Google Meet.
Thank you so much for visiting EdTech Classroom! I’d love to chat!

What Morning Meeting Games and Activities have worked well for your classroom? Email us at myedtechclassroom@gmail.com. Let’s learn and grow together.