February Morning Meeting Ideas for Virtual, In-Person, and Hybrid Teaching (2021)
Morning Meeting is my favorite time of the day, but it can be tricky to come up with a new Morning Meeting every single day.
In this school year especially, teachers are pulled in so many different directions – from teaching online to teaching in a socially-distanced classroom to hybrid teaching. Morning Meeting has started to feel like another “thing” that teachers have to do.
Morning Meeting has quickly become my thing online. I’ve shared videos with tips and tricks and I’ve created a bunch of products too.
For today’s blog post, I’m sharing ideas on how to conduct the perfect February-themed Morning Meeting – whether you’re teaching in your classroom or on Zoom.
We’ll be looking at (1) February Morning Meeting Slides and (2) 2021 February Holiday Morning Meeting Ideas! You can check out my slides for the entire month of February here.
Morning Meeting Slides
My #1 tip for Morning Meeting is to create slides. I’ve found that teachers have the most success with having consistently engaging Morning Meetings when they create slides to help guide students.
Slides presentations can help provide structure and routine – and they are visually interesting for students too. If you’re teaching online on Zoom or Google Meet, for example, you can screenshare Morning Meeting slides during Morning Meeting. Or if you’re teaching in-person in your classroom, you can project slides on the board.
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 projecting or screensharing a cheery image with the day of the week on it. It is a great way to set the tone for the meeting.
Greeting
Then once everyone has entered your classroom (or the Zoom Meeting Room), you can begin by saying something like, “Good morning! It is a frosty winter day. Today is Wednesday February 10, 2021. Jordan is our morning leader. Jordan, how will we greet the class today?”
Typically students will opt for the same greetings. For example, they might want to do a dance move to greet each other, or they might do a (virtual) wave greeting.
Share
Then, you will move onto the share portion of the Morning Meeting. I really like shares that have a social-emotional lens to them because they allow students to reflect on how they are feeling. You can also share sillier prompts too (i.e. “Would you rather have a pet polar bear or a pet penguin?”).
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.” I’ve also found the website Wheel of Names to be a fun and engaging way to call on students, no matter your teaching environment!
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
You can end off Morning Meeting with the Morning Message. This is a great place to introduce your next activity or outline your schedule for the day. You can have students: do a math problem, reflect on something they learned yesterday, practice their writing skills, and so much more.
2021 February Holiday Morning Meetings
In addition to sharing slides with students, I also highly recommend incorporating holidays into your Morning Meetings. In February, there are a number of different holidays you might want to share with students!
- Black History Month
- Groundhog Day
- National Pizza Day
- Valentine’s Day
- Chinese New Year
- Presidents’ Day
Morning Meeting can be a great time to introduce students to different holidays and allows for more in-depth extension activities later on in the day. For “National Pizza Day,” you might ask students to share their favorite type of pizza. For Chinese New Year, you might ask students about their favorite animal in the zodiac. And for Black History Month, you might have students share their thoughts on how to make the world more fair and equal for everyone.
Do you like these slides?
I created an ENTIRE MONTH’S worth of pre-made, ready-to-go (but still editable!) Morning Meeting Slides to use with your students in February. If you like these slides and activity ideas, you can check out my product here.
What other ideas do you have? What activities do you enjoy doing during Morning Meeting? Let me know!
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