Setting Expectations for Morning Meeting

• Arriving at Morning Meeting: I always had some sort of signal to tell kids it was time to clean up their morning work and join us at morning meeting.  This was something we would practice, practice, practice at the beginning of the year.  The expectation was that when they heard the signal, they'd immediately put away their things and quietly find a spot in the Morning Meeting circle.  This happened quickly and quietly so that no time was wasted. Morning Meeting is included in our transition tracker. At the beginning of the year, I have a student timekeeper time how long each transition takes.... They LOVE trying to beat their time, and I love saving all those precious minutes for instruction! 

• Forming a Circle: This could really fall under arrival, but I think it's important to mention.  We had a "rule" that we did not sit next to the same people each day when getting into the circle formation for Morning Meeting and that NOBODY was left out of the circle.  I let children choose their space within the Morning Meeting circle, but I reserved the right to move anyone at any time.  It also takes a few weeks, but after a while, students really learn how to form the circle without me having to ask them to make space for everyone.  Setting these expectations up front saves headaches later!
• Respecting Talk Time: This may be the most important one!  During sharing time, we set that expectation that whoever "had the floor" TRULY had the floor.  So often while sharing, another kiddo would raise their hand and say, "OH! That happened to me too..." and proceed to tell their story.  Since we really want students to feel like they are being heard, we teach kids to do a "me too" single or "connection" single to acknowledge that they relate to what's being said but to not take the spotlight off of other students. We always encouraged students to share their connections with the sharer during resource or during another time! Morning Meeting discussions provide GREAT conversation starters for later!

• The Ball Toss:What kid doesn't LOVE a koosh ball?  This usually showed up at least once a week in our room because it was quick and easy but well-loved.  Everyone in the circle would stand up, and I'd toss the ball to a student and greet them by name.  They'd greet me back, then choose another person to greet and toss it to them.  Once they've been greeted, they sit down. 

• The Shoe Greeting:  Each student throws one shoe into the circle.  You go around the circle and each student chooses a shoe, finds the person wearing the match, and does a simple handshake greeting.

• Order Up: This is a play on the old "line up according to birthdays without talking." All year long, students would brainstorm ways that we could order ourselves, alphabetical, by birthday, by age, etc. and we would make our circle in that format and do a simple handshake greeting around the circle.

• Snowball Fight: This one literally never got old.  As part of the morning message, I would tell students to write their name on a piece of paper and bring it to the morning meeting.  When they arrive, I would have them crumple it up and throw it in the center.  Going around the circle, each person picks a snowball and greets that child.

• Commonly Uncommon: This is a play on the common "Just like me!" game that is described in the official Morning Meeting book.  Going around the circle, each child would say one unique thing about themselves, like, "Good morning! I am Mrs. Montero, and I absolutely LOVE learning about the Titanic."  Any child that agreed with that statement would stand up and say, "Hey!  Me too!" Then, they would great one another.  If there were a TON of me toos, the person would just choose a few. 

• Picture Books: At least once a week, I include a picture book reading and discussion in my morning meeting plans.  Here is one example of how I used a picture book at the beginning of the year.  We read the book The Day You Begin (so good).  Then the kids wrote down (anonymously) things that made them unique.  We posted the sticky notes and read them aloud.  The next day, if there were kids that had something in common, we placed a heart next to the sticky note to show some commonalities.  This is just ONE example, but the options are truly endless with picture book.

• Drama Circles:I LOVE Drama Circles from Runde's Room, and so did my students.  We did one for just about every holiday and any other time I could fit them in.  I can't recommend these enough!

• Think It Through: This is a routine that I've talked about pretty extensively on the blog, and one that I will FOREVER be passionate about including.  We typically do our morning work before morning meeting, and Think it Through is always at least one morning's morning work, and then students also use it as an early finisher option.  On Fridays, discussing that week's content is our activity.  I LOVE hearing what students think about their quotes, and the week's activities always end up causing quite the discussion! 

• Would You Rather: There are SO many options for free Would You Rather questions, and kids always eat them up!  We would all stand in a line and then have one side of the room be one option and one side be the other.  Sometimes I would let them engage in a little debate about it, too.

• Critical Thinking Moments:ANY of the ideas from my "Increasing Critical Thinking in Your Spare Time" blog post can be used as Morning Meeting activities.  Many of them come straight from our Morning Meeting routines!

Teaching students the difference between literal and inferential thinking is one of my must-do lessons at the beginning of every single school year, no matter which elementary grade I'm teaching. I have talked about this so many times, but I wanted to put all of these inference anchor charts in ONE PLACE for easy access!

Introducing the idea of how we make an inference truly makes all the difference. This foundation of skills is crucial before we continue on with the rest of our reading skills and novels for the year!

Surprise, surprise! I start teaching this skill using a picture... if you have spent some time perusing my blog, you'll know that I introduce just about every single reading skill by using a picture. You can read other posts about how I use pictures HERE and HERE.

For this inference lesson, we begin by talking about the difference between a literal observation and the inferences we make based on those observations (and our prior knowledge), then we totally dissect a picture. It is so fun, engaging, and really solidifies understanding about the difference between a literal observation and an inferential observation. It's a quick lesson, but so, so meaningful.

I have done this introduction lesson a few different ways over the years, but it always leads to similar discussions. Here are a few of pictures of the inference anchor charts we created together as we discussed the difference between literal and inferential observations. You can do one, two, three, or all four different variations over the course of a week to get your students really SOLID in their inference skills!

This inference anchor chart was really easy to create (and done with third graders). The words in pink are LITERAL observations, and then the blue words describe the inference students make based on the inference.

This anchor chart is slightly more advanced (and I discuss it more on THIS blog post), and it was created with 4th and 5th graders. They each used their own sticky notes to come up with an observation and a follow-up inference based on that observation.

This anchor chart was made with 4th graders, and instead of connecting the two ideas, we totally separated them. I discuss this lesson more HERE.

This lesson was done with advanced 2nd graders who were really just learning about the difference between literal and inferential thinking. It's more basic, but still very impactful. It's a great starting point.

With this foundation of learning, my students are ready to start tackling inferences in novels, read alouds, and more!

Before I even attempt to write this post, I want to be 1000% clear that I don’t believe any teacher anywhere needs to work on schoolwork or preparations during the summer.  However, I know that at some point in the middle of summer break, many teachers get an itch to start working on their classrooms for the upcoming year!  Further, many teachers simply don’t get enough prep time before school starts, which means they have to start thinking about school well before their contract hours begin.

I’ve always been one of those people who has a steady stream of school projects going on all summer long, and over the years, I’ve wasted a lot of that time working on things that don’t matter.  I have an extensive blog post about what you need to prep for the first day of school and what you can leave behind, but it’s been over five years since I wrote that original post, and I have even more to add. Here’s my list of summer to-dos that actually make a difference come day one and my list of dont-dos that can wait!

2020 Disclaimer: I’ve had this post in drafts for a few years and was finally able to finish it up. While this school year may look a lot different than a typical year, this list doesn’t include any distance-learning specific must-dos. 

This also gives you time to prepare some of your resources.  I’m working on a blog post about math workshop specifics, but here is a quick overview and how it impacts my summer planning.  I typically have three rotations on any given day.  One is always Meet with Teacher.  The others will vary between Task Cards, Independent Work, Math Games, Fact Practice.

Ways to Prepare for Math and Reading Workshop: 

• Prepare labels for each of the rotations or decide how you will display the different activities students will be doing.  I print and laminate titles of each rotation and then put student names on magnets so they are easy to move around and group for different units.

• I prepare a TON of task cards over the summer.  A ton.  I use them in both my Task Card and Math/Reading Games station, and I have a set for just about every topic.  I love the feeling of having them all printed, laminated (if you laminate) and ready to go before the school year even starts. HERE is a blog post about how I organize my task cards.
• Gather Games.  For me, this means I am looking for games at Goodwill, really great deals on mini travel games over the summer, and also preparing content-specific games.  I also use these for indoor recess! 
• I gather and prepare materials for several ideas for fact practice over the summer, and I always seem to change this up.  HERE is one of my favorite math fact practice games that you can prep over the summer.

Design your Best Plan Book:  Decide how you are going to plan out your weeks.  I’d caution you to REALLY look into any plan books you are thinking of investing in.  I feel like I’ve had them all and, well, I rarely use anything other than the weekly/daily plan sheets within them.  While I loved my fancy bound planners, I always revert back to a very basic, full page (or two page) daily plan that I hole punch and place into a binder.  Find what works for you!

Organize Your Library and Build a Book Collection: I was at Goodwill every week when I was still building a classroom library (don’t forget to look for games while you are there, too)!  You can also reach out to friends and neighbors.  I have found that people are more than willing to give away children’s books to teachers!

Make sure you have a library full of different, diverse characters and settings (see @diversereads on Instagram for a good definition of “diverse” and so many wonderful suggestions), a variety of levels (both picture books and chapter books are a must), and include books that challenge your students’ perspectives.  Decide how you are going to organize your library.  I did mine by topic, and never by level.

Plan your first week: This is a BIG one! The first week of school is huge, and it was always the week I spent the most time planning.  I finally figured out my “ideal” first week of school.  I shared those detailed plans for free HERE. 

Pacing Guides/Scope and Sequence: Your school or district will likely already have this planned out for you, but it is really crucial that you have a master plan of what your year is going to look like and become intimately familiar with it.  There is so much (SO MUCH) to fit into every school year, and you can easily get off track.  You also need to be ready to pivot.  Teaching long division is probably going to take you infinitely longer than you are prepared for.  Identify places in your calendar that you can wiggle a little bit and know when diversions are likely coming.

Anchor Charts: I am a huge, huge advocate of creating anchor charts WITH your students while you are learning about certain concepts.  Unless required by your school, you really need very few reference materials hanging on your walls at the start of the school year.  That being said, I do recommend you have a designated space for anchor charts, reference materials, and student projects for each subject you teach.  Just leave them blank!  

When I student taught, I spent half a semester in 5th grade and half a semester in kindergarten. It was jarring moving between 5th grade and kindergarten, to say the least! When I got a job that spring, I was hired for a 3rd grade position… smack dab in the middle of what I’d been prepared for. Through the years, I have worked with students in all grade levels K-5 in a variety of positions: classroom teacher, interventionist, and gifted coordinator. While it’s obvious that each grade level and age level will present its own unique celebrations and challenges, there is a general shift that occurs between the primary and upper grades.

A question that often comes up in my Facebook Group, Inspired in Upper Elementary, is: “Help! I’ve always been a primary grades teacher, and now I’m moving to the upper grades. What do I need to know?”

If you are considering or facing a move from primary to upper elementary grades, here are some things to think about to help make it a smooth transition.

Children in the lower primary grades are truly “littles.” Sticky hands, hugs, and innocent wondering questions are all a part of the teaching package. As their teacher, you are tasked with teaching them the very foundations of how to be a student. Sure, this includes a ton of academic skills, but also how to listen attentively, how to walk in a line, and how to be a good friend/classmate. Spoiler Alert: You’ll still be teaching those same skills in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade, but you’ll need some new tricks up your sleeve. Holding bubbles in your mouth while walking down the hall just won’t have the same effect as it did in kinder.

Once students hit 3rd or 4th grade, they are seasoned veterans of school. They know how they should operate within a classroom, and they know the basics of functioning within a classroom community. However, they all need reminders, practice, and reinforcement of appropriate behaviors. (I should also add that for ANY teacher beginning a new school year, it’s so important to remember that your expectations may vary widely from their former teacher. Keep this in mind as you embark on a new school year.)

When I welcomed my first group of 3rd graders after having student taught in 5th grade, I thought their three years of school would have prepared them for the basics of studenthood. I gave them way too much freedom far too quickly, and I learned that they still need ample guidance on how to work and learn in a new classroom.

Of course, there’s more to the upper grades than just mastering lining up a rowdy group of 10-year-olds for recess. In the upper grades, social relationships get more complicated, and some of their earlier innocence has matured.

Third graders are sweet as pie, and most are still learning about exercising their independence in a school setting. In third grade, we really focused on developing confidence through a growth mindset and analyzing multiple intelligences and learning styles so that they had a greater self-awareness of themselves as learners. The growth from the beginning of the year third graders to the end of the year third graders is ASTOUNDING. Truly. You will watch them mature before your very eyes. I think third grade is one of the most significant years of change in elementary school.

Fourth graders are still so sweet and kind, and they are becoming much more independent. They are typically starting to function really well in small group settings, and fourth graders have an AMAZING sense of humor. Most third and fourth graders still really love their teachers and school, and they will do just about anything you ask of them. Some will really start to dabble in “big kid” issues toward the end of the year but are usually still receptive to teacher advice and guidance.

By 5th grade (sometimes 4th grade), students are like mini-tweens. I love, love, love 5th graders (can you tell I really love upper elementary kids?). They are funny, independent, and really figuring out who they are are PEOPLE and students. Friendship challenges are common, so building a classroom community and open communication are crucial. Keep an eye on recess-happenings so that you have a good idea of friendship dynamics and any trouble that might be brewing.

Upper grades children are articulate and can do all of those things you used to teach – things like reading and math! Chances are there will be things that you will miss about teaching “littles,” but understand there are positive trade-offs you will definitely appreciate (fifth graders know a good corny joke when they hear one!).

Yep. Academics are very different in the upper grades. I know this is a given, but think long and hard about those differences as you embark on this new journey.

In the upper grades, I really find it crucial to let my students explore topics that interest them. At this age, many are finding sports, activities, and topics that they can’t get enough of. LEAN into this because this is a way to nearly guarantee engagement. Incorporate student choice as much as you can — it fosters independence, too!

Collaboration is one of my favorite things about my Inspired by Upper Elementary Facebook group. It’s a safe place where upper elementary teachers can ask questions, share ideas, and collaborate with one another. If you haven’t visited, you should definitely check it out!

Recently, a teacher asked about the pros and cons of departmentalizing in upper elementary. The discussion that followed was amazing and included a ton of great thoughts, tips and ideas. The whole discussion had me reflecting on the pros and cons of
departmentalizing in elementary schools…

• By departmentalizing, you are not spending as much time with your students. You lose time and activities that help to build relationships with students. Numerous teachers that transitioned from a self-contained classroom to a departmentalized approach felt that they did not have as strong of relationships with their students as they had in a self-contained setting. They also felt that they did not get to know their students as well as in previous years. (Note: Many teachers shared that although they were worried about this at the beginning of the year, it really didn’t come to fruition. They were able to be more intentional in their relationship building and didn’t see as much of a difference. I will note that when I was co-teaching and only seeing my students half the time, I was still able to build great relationship with my students.)

PRO:

• Departmentalizing gives students multiple
  teachers they can go to for support in academics or life.  Sometimes
  a student does not “click” with one teacher but they will with another
  teacher.

• I really
  hesitated to mention this one, but I think it’s important. We all know that not every student and teacher can have an ideal
  relationship.  When
  students/teachers don’t necessarily see eye to eye, many teachers note
  that challenging relationships are usually less strained when students
  move to another teacher(s) for part of the day.  Moving from class to
  class seemed to actually benefit some of the more challenging
  relationships, caused less teacher stress, and made for a better learning
  environment for everyone.

I loved reading how much
passion there was from both sides of this issue.  I love that teachers
want to build strong relationships with their students.  If this is
something that is important to you (and it really, really should be), then I
believe it can happen in either setting.  Yes, it might look a bit
different in a departmentalized setting, but that doesn’t mean good
student/teacher relationships can’t happen.  Be intentional about making
building relationships an important part of your classroom environment.

Recommendations: If you decide to go with this approach, it’s
best for students to have a homeroom teacher and a “home base.” This
way, students still get the benefits of having daily morning meetings, team
building activities, and more. On the same topic, be sure you have plenty of
opportunities for students in separate homerooms to work with one another.

Consistency

Whether you’ve been a
teacher, parent, or both, you probably know that kids thrive with
consistency.  Children do best when there is a consistent routine and
consistent expectations.  So how does departmentalizing impact
consistency?

CON:

• By changing teachers multiple times throughout
  the day, students lose the consistency and routine that they so thrive
  on.  They tend to struggle more than in a self-contained classroom
  because of the differences amongst teachers, changing expectations and
  classroom environments.

• Students with special needs tend to have a
  much more difficult time adjusting to the change and transition from
  teacher to teacher.

PRO:

• While
  consistency is very important for young children, as they get older they
  are better able to adapt to change.  As students enter middle school,
  changing classes and teachers will simply be a requirement. 
  Departmentalizing with a team of 2 or 3 teachers in elementary school
  helps to prepare students for the future and ease the transition later
  on.  Departmentalizing in upper elementary is a good baby step to
  help students get from self-contained elementary classes to middle
  school.  

• Consistency does not mean nothing
  changes.  Students in a self-contained classroom often change for
  specials, so they’ve likely already been prepared for the next step of
  changing core teachers.  Students can have consistency in a
  departmentalized setting even when they change teachers and classrooms.
  The consistency comes from classroom expectations. 

• Students with
  special needs have been successful in departmentalizing.  The
  switching of teachers becomes their consistency.  Helping them know
  what to expect and preparing them for the changes is a great way to help
  them learn the new routine that comes with departmentalizing.

One of the common themes in
this online discussion was the need for team teachers to work together. 
Many teachers were quick to say that consistency can happen when teachers work
as a team to provide consistent classroom management routines, student
expectations for behavior and work completion.  However, these same
teachers also said that when the team teachers are too different and don’t work
well together that the consistency will not be there and the students will be
the only ones that suffer. 

Recommendation: Consistency can be achieved by having a
consistent routine each day within your departmentalized schedule. Try not to
deviate from that routine on a regular basis.

Mastery in Subject Area

CON:

• In a
  self-contained classroom, the teacher is responsible for teaching all of
  the subject areas.  It is difficult and time-consuming to truly get
  to know the standards for all of the curriculum (possible understatement
  of the year! Ha!). 

• Teachers spend a
  lot of time with lesson planning for all the subject areas. A. Lot. Of.
  Time.

• By only focusing
  on one or two subject areas, you can become out of touch with the
  standards and best practices in other areas. 

• There is a great
  benefit to cross-curricular, transdisciplinary teaching for students to
  see how different skills and ideas can work together.  Having taught in an IB school where all
  learning is supposed to be transdisciplinary, it would be a huge challenge
  to only teach one subject.

PRO:

• By focusing on
  one or two subject areas, teachers can dig deep into the standards and
  develop a teaching specialty. Students benefit from a more focused
  teacher. 

• Less time is
  spent on lesson planning freeing up more time for developing new lesson
  activities for students.

• Teachers can
  work together to create cross-curricular lessons that help meet standards
  for different subjects.  

• With less time
  spent on lesson planning, it makes teacher/life balance a lot easier.

• Students benefit
  when a teacher gets to focus on the subject they are passionate about or
  that is their strength.

It is important to note
here that numerous people added this thought: Departmentalizing works well when
teachers are assigned to teach an area they are strong in.  However, it
can be disastrous when this doesn’t happen.  One teacher shared about
being placed in a situation to teach language arts and social studies despite
her strengths being in math and science.  She described the struggles she
had and how difficult it was. Ultimately, she said it was the hardest year of
teaching she had ever had and that she felt like she was not as good of a
teacher for her students as she had been in previous years.

Recommendations: Communicating with the other teachers on your
team will be so important so that you can still integrate cross-curricular
themes as much as possible. This can be as easy as a quick 10-minute meeting
each week where you discuss your themes and concepts for the upcoming weeks so
that you can start considering how you can integrate them into YOUR content.

Use of Time

Another factor to consider
when deciding whether to departmentalize or have self-contained classes is the
use of time.

CON:

• Transitioning
  from class to class wastes a lot time, no matter how well-prepared our
  students are.

• You lose
  flexibility when you have to stay on a specific schedule.  In a
  self-contained class, if you finish early you can move on, or if a lesson
  runs a little over you can adjust the schedule or activities.

• When activities
  like assemblies, field trips, and class pictures happen, one class ends up
  losing time in a specific subject matter while other classes would not.

• It is more
  difficult to adjust to the needs of the students when you have multiple
  classes, and you are trying to keep them all together.  Not all
  classes learn the same and some classes may need more time on a skill or
  concept and another class may move quickly through. (Personal Note:
  This can be alleviated somewhat by grouping your classes, but that is a
  blog topic for another day!)

  

PRO:

• Transitions make great brain breaks.  Students truly do need a little downtime between lessons, and the transition from one class or teacher to another provides not only a break but is also a great visual for the mental switch that has to happen when you move from one subject matter to another.

• Transitions do
  not have to take a long time.  Students can learn how to transition
  quickly with well-defined procedures and expectations.

• When team
  teachers work well together and understand how important it is to be flexible, they can adjust class times
  to account for occasional schedule changes.  One teacher shared how
  they teach on a block schedule so that each class has the same amount of
  time together but also the same number of mornings and afternoons since
  students often do better in the morning.

Collaboration

The ability to work
together to solve problems or create amazing learning opportunities is a such an important part of teaching.  I am a firm believer that we can do great
things on our own, but we can be even better together.

CON:

• In a
  self-contained classroom, there is only one teacher to figure out how to
  address the needs of struggling students, behavior issues or other
  concerns.  While other teachers can give ideas they do not have
  in-person and first-hand experience with that student  like the
  primary teacher.

• In smaller
  schools especially, departmentalizing often means that there is only one teacher per
  grade level teaching a specific subject.  This leaves the teacher as
  the sole creator of lessons with no one to share ideas with, collaborate
  with or learn from.

PRO:

• Departmentalizing allows multiple teachers to have first-hand insight into problems a
  student may be having.  Teachers can work together to help resolve behavior issues or learning struggles.  Numerous teachers mentioned how helpful it was to have another teacher who was seeing similar issues in a student.  Not only was it a good confirmation, but it helped to
  have someone to talk to about a student’s issues. 

• Teachers can
  collaborate on what is working well in a class to help students in other
  areas.

• When doing a two
  way split where each class has two teachers, there are often multiple
  teams per grade level.  This gives each subject area two or more
  teachers that can plan and collaborate together. If this isn’t possible, be sure to join subject-specific Facebook groups for support and request special PD opportunities to help hone your craft!

Much of collaboration comes
down to the people involved.  If teachers choose to collaborate and work
with each other, it can be beautiful in both a self-contained or
departmentalized setting.

A Note on the Research…

Beyond anecdotes and advice, it’s also important to consider the research on departmentalizing in the elementary classroom.  HERE is a really interesting article on it.

My Take-Aways . . .

If you are looking for an
answer as to whether you should departmentalize, you are not going to find it
here.  Why?  Well, because there are many factors that must be
considered in this decision.  Every school is different, teachers are different,
students are different.  What might be best for my school might not be
best for yours.  So while I won’t tell you what to do, I will share some
of my take aways from this important discussion:

1. The pairing of
   team teachers is really important.  Whether this is done by the
   administration or the teachers, this is something that must be done with
   care. It’s important to make sure that teachers that are teamed up work
   well together, communicate well together, have consistent expectations, and
   are willing to work together and practice flexibility.
2. The teaching
   assignment is another important decision that must be made.  Teachers
   should be able to give input into areas they feel they are stronger in,
   subjects they enjoy teaching or are passionate about.
3. Teaching assignments
   should be fairly distributed.  Language Arts instruction is more than
   one subject (Reading, Writing, Grammar, Spelling)  and often carries
   with it the task of teaching and grading essays.  This work load is
   not the same as other subject areas and this should be taken into
   consideration when making teacher assignments.
4. In upper
   elementary, a teacher team of 2 or 3 appears to be more successful and
   less overwhelming for students than switching classes with 4 or more
   teachers.  This seems to be the “sweet spot” for helping prepare
   students for middle school while still providing them the consistency and
   guidance they need at this age.
5. Not all pros and
   cons are equal.  It’s important to prioritize the things that will
   make the classroom learning environment the best it can be for our
   students.  One teacher recommends making a pro/con list and then
   categorizing each as: pro for the student / pro for the teacher / con for
   the student / con for the teacher.  I really liked this suggestion
   and found that it helps to keep the decision focused on what is best for
   the students.  And remember that just because it is pro teacher
   doesn’t mean it is con for the student.  A happy and less stressed
   teacher can make for a better learning environment which is a pro for
   students too!

What Are Your Thoughts?

I’d love to hear your
thoughts on departmentalizing.  Join the discussion by leaving your
comments below.  If this is something you are looking into, then make sure
to pin this to your favorite classroom Pinterest board so you can come back
when you need to.  Also, feel free to share this with other teachers or
administrators as part of your discussion on departmentalizing in upper
elementary.

Every year that I walk into a classroom, I have the same goal: build our class into warm, welcoming community that functions like a great, big extended family. The goal is to take 20 to 30 people who might not know each other, who might not have a single thing in common, and who might not always get along, and bring them together in a way that they look forward to being together, support and encourage one another and help each other through the learning process. It might be a lofty goal, but it’s an important one that helps to create an overall safe and effective learning environment. Here are some of my favorite tried and true activities to help build community in the classroom.

There are some things we do in class every. single. day that help to build the classroom community! No, I’m not talking about taking attendance or getting lunch count, although I HAVE heard of some teachers adding a fun little twist to these daily tasks (like singing it) and that could become a tradition.

Here, I’m focusing on special activities that make students feel welcome and like they are part of something bigger than themselves. Having spent years working in an International Baccalaureate (IB) School, it was always a goal of mine that students see that there is so much more beyond the walls of their home, school, city, state, and country. Building this type of community is one small way of doing just that.

Class Greeting

Every day, I greet my students at the door to our classroom. I know the mornings are busy, but this is top priority for me as students enter.

I want them to know that I am happy they are there and welcome them in with a smile. Most days we give each other a warm handshake, some days we high-five, some days we fist bump and others we use silly voices. But my most favorite way to greet my students is with a “secret handshake” that has become popular on social media over the years. A few years ago, I started coming up with a special way to do this. Sometimes I create the movement (it’s not just a handshake – that would be too boring) and other years we create it as a class.

You can use it when students arrive in the morning, when they leave for the day, or any time you need a moment of connection during the day. It’s ours and it becomes a special form of communication just for us.

Want to create your own secret class greeting? I’d suggest keeping it short, like 2 or 3 simple motions, no more than about 5 seconds, and have fun with it. Sure, you might look silly, but at least you’ll look silly together.

I know that social media has popularized each student have their own personal secret handshake, but I have never done that, primarily because I have the coordination of a donkey (?? are donkeys uncoordinated? That just felt like the right analogy to me in the moment) and it would take me all year to memorize 30 separate handshakes.

Morning Meeting

Now, before you stop me and tell me that Morning Meeting is only for primary grades, hear me out. Morning meeting can be a very valuable and special time for older kids too! I will never have a classroom where I don’t incorporate some form of morning meeting every day.

You don’t have to review the calendar or sing a song every morning (although kids of all ages LOVES a good song, whether or not they will admit it upfront). Instead, make it an important part of the day that helps everyone get on the same page.

I have a HUGE post all about Morning Meeting HERE, but here are a few suggestions of things you could do to make morning meeting a community building time in your classroom.

• Review the schedule for the day and help everyone mentally prepare for the day ahead. This is especially helpful if you have any schedule changes that need to be discussed.
• I always let a few people share each day. In the lower grades, I would have students sign up to share, but in the upper grades, I was able to make it more flexible and allow children to raise their hands to share whatever is on their mind.
• This Day in History is a fun way to learn some fun historical facts while focusing on the day. You’d be surprised at how quickly the kids begin to anticipate it.
• It is during morning meeting that we share our reflections on the Quote of the Day from Think it Through. We usually do this on Friday. I have students share out what they think the quote means, and it always ends up in a beautiful discussion. This is a great time to reinforce growth mindset principles, dig into character traits or connect our daily lives with important people from history.
• Word of the Day is a great way to build student vocabulary in less than a minute. Share the word and the definition then write it on the board so the kids see it all day long. Have a special class cheer or small reward for any student who can use the word correctly during the day.
• Have a quick write journal that gets your students writing for about 5 minutes every morning. Use a writing prompt that will lead to class discussion, or just have a discussion based on the prompt. Limit the writing time and then have a time of sharing or discussion. Writing prompts that focus on emotions, character traits and encouraging classmates is a great way to build community.

Now you don’t have to do all of these at one time. Choose one or two you like best and do them every day. If you like many of the ideas, choose a different one for each day of the week and develop a weekly morning meeting routine.

Daily Praise & Reflection

At the end of each day, I like to have a time of daily praise or reflection. Sometimes it’s me giving praise to the students and other times it is peer praise. What’s great about this is that depending on the time available it could be a super-fast 30 seconds of praise or it could fill 5 minutes. It’s a great way to build up students, acknowledge their effort and to let them know that you notice the little things. One of the things that I am very intentional about with praise is focusing on the action, the character trait or the skill that was shown, and I teach my students to do the same. In my room we don’t typically focus on praising appearance, clothes or possessions.

Although I don’t have a set list that I follow or an order for giving praise, I do make sure that every student receives public praise. Not only does it go a long way in building the teacher/student relationship, but it also helps to reinforce positive choices. Find the positive, reinforce it, and watch as your students repeat it day after day. I have watched students who have struggled with poor classroom behavior or self-esteem have dramatic improvements because of Daily Praise.

I also love hearing my students reflect on their day’s work. Sometimes instead of Daily Praise, we also do a daily reflection. We talk about the best parts of the day (doesn’t HAVE to be academic in nature), and we even reflect on some parts of the day that didn’t go as well as they could have.

Special Occasion Class Traditions

I also like to incorporate some class traditions on special occasions too. These might only happen occasionally during the year, or they might be a once a year event that students experience together. Oftentimes, these are the traditions that kids may even already know about before they come into my classroom because they’ve heard about them through the grapevine!

Mini Room Transformations

I am a huge proponent of mini room transformations when you can apply them to specific skills you are teaching. They most often coincide with my math and reading projects, but we also do a Book Tasting several times throughout the year. At the beginning of the year, I always transform my room into a little detective zone for our Place Value Detective Project. It’s super basic– I just hang up some caution tape, purchase magnifying glasses at Oriental Trading, and get a stamp pad for students to fingerprint their papers when they finish each section. I do this for several different units (or anytime I can apply it to academics), and it has become a tradition in my classroom that students rave about! It does NOT need to be over the top to be engaging and meaningful!

Class Rewards

This is a pretty personal tradition, and you have to find one that works really well for your class, your students, and your classroom management style. I have done a variety of different reward systems, but students seem to gravitate toward a “ticket” system most often. They can earn tickets as “gotchas” for literally ANYTHING positive. They can’t lose them. The best part is that at the end of the week or at random (they especially love when I randomly pick up the ticket tub), I pull a few tickets out of the jar and they can choose a small prize. SMALL is key. They are usually pencils, cool markers and pens, little doodads, etc. I ask for donations at the beginning of the year and then collect things on sale as I see them.

Big Kid Show and Tell

Kids love show and tell…ESPECIALLY the big kids. They love sharing things about themselves and their lives. Building relationships happens when we share and get to know each other at a deeper level. So although I know the rigorous demands on your time, I also know that there is a great benefit to show and tell. I usually try to incorporate show and tell into morning meeting, but here are a few extra ideas about how I connect show and tell to the learning standards so that we can meet both a community building and academic goals:

• Use show and tell to meet the speaking and listening standards
• Have a themed show and tell that is connected to something you are learning about
• Have a written show and tell where students bring in a picture of themselves with the show and tell item and then write about it

I try to have a different sharing topic once a month for morning meeting, but there are times when we skip a month, and I DO let students choose their own sharing during morning meeting, too. Here are a few themed show and tell topics to get you started:

1. This week we are learning about different types of angles. Bring in a show and tell item that has at least 1 obtuse angle, 1 acute angle and 1 right angle. Yep – all three angles in one item! You will have 1 minute to tell about the item and identify the angles.
2. This month we are focusing on the character trait of bravery. Bring in a picture or an item and share about a time you witnessed bravery or you yourself were brave.
3. In science, we just learned about Sir Isaac Newton and his laws of motion. This month’s show and tell will focus on things that move. Bring in an item or a picture of a moving object and be ready to tell us what Sir Isaac Newton would have to say about it. No living things may be brought to class – bring a picture instead!

With some creative thinking, Show and Tell can be used to not only support your standards, but also to get your students applying and analyzing their learning and connecting it to real, everyday life.

Throwback Thursday

Have you ever had a great teaching idea on the spur of the moment? That’s how Throwback Thursday started. You see, it was a Thursday afternoon after a long week of test prep and I found myself staring at the glazed-over eyes of my students. I knew I couldn’t just keep going, so I started thinking of something to do to take a break. Then I remembered the social media post I saw that morning – a Throwback Thursday image of my friend and her family. Before I realized what I was really saying, I excitedly announced “It’s time for Throwback Thursday!”

My students looked up at me a little confused and so I explained that I was going to set a timer and for the next 5 minutes we were going to share some of our class favorite days, activities, memories and stories from the year. Hands started shooting up all over the room and for the next 5 minutes we re-lived some of our greatest moments. There was energy in the room as we laughed and remembered together. It was just what we needed to break up our day.

The next Thursday a student asked, aren’t we going to do Throwback Thursday? When the class cheered I knew it would become a weekly or almost weekly class tradition.<

Stand Up Comedians

If you’ve spent much time in an upper grades classroom, you know how much kids LOVE to share and tell jokes! I encouraged my students to collect jokes, and when we had a few extra minutes, we’d have STAND UP time! It can take as little as 2 minutes out of your day, and students love, love, love it. File this under Brain Break ideas, too!

Fun Friday

Most Friday mornings, I would bring my class outside for a quick 10-15 minute game. You could always tie this into your classroom management system, but I rarely took this away because it was such a special time for us. There are so many easy games to play (Captain’s Coming is a favorite), and over time they get GIDDY with excitement when they arrive on Friday mornings.

Picture Board

I strongly suggest that you find a way that you’d like to document your year in pictures and reflections. My first year teaching, I did something called “Reel Reflections” and took pictures each month to print out. On the last day of the month, we would talk about ALL the things we did and learned that month, and I would type them out and hang them next to the pictures. It stayed up all year, and was so fun to see all of our learning! I wish I had a picture of it, because it was such a great display.

A few years ago, I put up an Instagram bulletin board that I would change out monthly with different pictures. Students absolutely loved this. I kept all the pictures from each month and gave them out at the end of the year. It was the best walk down memory lane at the end of the year and keep smiling faces on the walls all year! (Tip: I hung up pictures of my family at the beginning of the year so students could get to know me and my family.)

Time Capsule

Have you ever put together a time capsule at the beginning of the year to be opened on the last day of school? It’s pretty fun! I take a class picture, we all write down our hopes and dreams, and I print out some local news articles. It’s always amazing to look back and see how much changes in a year.

Make Your Own Traditions

Remember Throwback Thursday? You see that wasn’t an activity I had on the lesson plans and it wasn’t even on the schedule. In fact, it wasn’t even in my head until that very moment. I share that to encourage you that not all community-building activities have to be thought out. In fact, some of the best start with a spontaneous thing that happens in class. It might start with an inside joke that only your class gets or maybe it’s an activity or way of your learning that your class really enjoys. It could be anything as long as you make it yours!

Be intentional about building community in the classroom, but also be flexible. An activity that was loved in previous years might be a flop and new activities, like Throwback Thursday, might be born. Each class has its own personality that will come out in its own unique ways. Go with it, have fun with it, and watch your group of random people become a family.

Pin It and Come Back!

If you are anything like me you vaguely remember a classroom idea but have no idea where you saw it. I started pinning ideas that I wanted to use in my classroom on my Pinterest boards. Now I go to Pinterest and can quickly and easily get back to my favorite classroom ideas and activities. So, pin this now so you can come back later for more classroom community building ideas.

How Do You Build Community in the Classroom?

I’d love to know some of your favorite community-building traditions. Come join the discussion in my teaching Facebook group or on Instagram.

Incorporating the outdoors into your classroom can be a fun way for kids to learn, and this year it will prove to be especially important. Studies show that getting into nature has a calming effect on children, improves sensory skills, can increase attention spans, and gives children a sense of freedom. While we can’t be outdoors all the time, we can even bring the outdoors inside! Here are some tips and tricks to help get nature into your classroom!

Nature as Manipulatives

Depending on your student’s level, items from nature make perfect materials for hands-on learning! Leaves, flowers, and rocks make perfect ways to learn colors and shapes.  Older kids can use the manipulatives to make shapes with certain attributes… Students can go on a scavenger hunt around the playground looking for different colors or shapes that can be found in nature. Challenge the students with bingo cards that ask them to find certain items.

For older students, things from nature such as acorns and pinecones can be used to group when learning multiplication and division. These items can also be used on place value charts when learning regrouping for addition and subtraction.

For the activity below, I gave each child four equal groups task cards, and they had to use outdoor manipulatives to represent them.

Outdoor Classroom

Don’t underestimate the power of simply stepping outside. When possible, take your class outside for periods of time! Read-alouds and sustained silent reading are perfect opportunities to go outdoors and let the kids get some fresh air while still learning.  If it’s a nice day outside, I regularly take my students outside with their literature circle books and conduct reading groups outside.

Science- especially on days where messy experiments are scheduled- is also an opportune time to take the class outside. Be sure to take all the necessary materials and your accountability sheet, and you’re all set for outdoor learning! The Science Penguin has SO many amazing outdoor scavenger hunts and science activities that work with many different topics.

Plants and Animals

An easy way to bring nature into your classroom is to have an abundance of plants! Plants bring the outside indoors, add brightness to your room, and improve air quality. You can choose a mix of flowering plants and green plants, and talk about the differences in growth between the different types. These plants can also be used to learn measurement and how to create data charts. Taking care of the plants is something that can be easily added to your class job chart.  I always have a group of students who take great pride in caring for the classroom plants.

I was never able to personally pull it off, but a classroom pet is also a great way to bring the outdoors inside. Whether it’s a fish, turtle, or hamster, students can learn about the animal and its natural habitat. Discussions about what the animal eats, where in nature it is found, and what it’s predators are can take place at morning meeting time. Much like plants, taking care of the class pet can be a student job, which increases a sense of responsibility among students!

Weather Charts and Pictures

Part of bringing the outdoors inside is to learn about what’s happening outdoors! You don’t have to wait until your curriculum calls for you to track the weather… A daily weather discussion can be incorporated as part of a morning meeting or science. Younger students (and let’s be honest, older students, too) will enjoy observing the weather and discussing the temperature and any precipitation. Chart the moon phases, or keep a line graph of the high and low temperatures daily.  Older students can talk about wind speed, different types of clouds, and humidity. Another idea for a class job is the class naturalist, who reports on current weather conditions.

Putting up pictures of beautiful nature scenes can also bring the outdoors in. You might want to choose pictures of places that are far away, so that students can see pictures of nature other than what is outside their own window. Some ideas include Antarctica, the rainforest, or the desert. Be sure to include animals, as well! Many students enjoy animals and these pictures can become great discussion topics. After a while, encourage students to find their own outdoor inspiration pictures to bring in and discuss.

Classroom Library Selections

Be sure to have books about nature and animals available to the students! These books can be enjoyed during sustained silent reading, or after independent work is completed. Additionally, if you have a writing center, look for writing prompts about plants, animals, the weather, or natural landforms. These topics can be enjoyable for kids to write about! When I was student teaching, my cooperating teacher pulled pictures off of scenic calendars and used them as writing prompts. They were always a huge hit.

Outdoor Scavenger Hunts

Have your students go on a scavenger hunt! While this one isn’t really nature-oriented, it’s a great way to take advantage of a beautiful day. I love hanging up task cards on the outside windows at my school and having students complete them scavenger hunt style. They all start at a different number card and then move around finding the next one in the numerical sequence.

These girls are working on Task Cards taped on our outdoor windows.  In the reflection, you can see even more students working on them!

Walking Podcasts

Do you have access to devices at your school? Have a group of students listen to an educational podcast while they walk around the track or playground.

Team Building and Morning Meeting Activities

Every Friday during Morning Meeting, it was a goal of mine to get outside and play a quick ten-minute game. Captain’s Coming was ALWAYS a favorite and that quick shot of fresh air and activity did wonders for their attention spans!

Find Inspiration Everywhere Outdoors

There are SO many ways to incorporate the area surrounding your school into lessons. For example, when we are studying angles, I have students go outside and find examples of angle types in the playground equipment. If you’re working on graphs, haves students collect data on how long it takes them to do certain things and then graph it. If you’re working on area and perimeter, go outside to measure dimensions of the concrete slabs. The options are truly endless, and there is a way to adapt most lessons to make them outdoors-friendly!

How do you incorporate the outdoors into your classroom?

Morning Meeting. It isn’t just for the primary kids! I was lucky enough to get my very first job at a school that very much believed in the power of Morning Meeting. We were given the Morning Meeting Book from Responsive Classroom (which I HIGHLY recommend) and then were given autonomy to run our Morning Meetings in the way that best fit our classroom. To start, I followed the prescribed routines EXACTLY. Eventually, I was able to meld my Morning Meeting time into a precious tradition that fit my and my students’ needs.

Please Note:This post was written pre-COVID, so some adaptations will definitely need to be made to ensure social distancing. However, I still believe in the immense value of morning meeting, and I’d encourage it to happen as often as possible, even if it’s over ZOOM!

The Purpose of Morning Meeting

The foundation of learning is a trusting relationship with a caring and effective teacher, and the best learning environment is one that is emotionally safe for every student. Morning meeting goes a long way in achieving this goal.

When you start the day with a routine Morning Meeting, students can feel welcomed, relaxed, confident, and ready to learn. By spending time interacting with their diverse group of peers, truly listening to others and learning about others’ lives and perspectives, students’ ability to live together in the community and in society is strengthened every day.

The Basics of Morning Meeting

Morning Meeting is a 20-30 minute block of time reserved for team building in the classroom. Morning Meeting is not often academic in and of itself, but research suggests that its benefits can have an effect on academic performance throughout the school day. Morning Meeting, when completed as suggested, has four distinct parts that are supposed to be completed each day. Due to time constraints, grade levels, or other limitations, one or more of these components may be cut to accommodate class time.

1. Greeting: Each person in the classroom is greeted individually. This can be done in a variety of ways, depending on the amount of time the teacher has for Morning Meeting or the other meetings that are planned. Most often, students “turn to the left and turn to the right and greet each other, by name, with a handshake.” Other times greeting games are played to combine the greeting and the activity. Greeting is one part of Morning Meeting that I NEVER miss. Ever. Even if we only have time for a handshake.

2. Activity: Students participate in a team-building activity, play a game, or read a relevant book that can facilitate discussions. The activities are often not academic, though they can often be modified to practice academic skills or integrate with classroom topics. If there is something going on in the classroom or at the school that needs to be addressed, it is often addressed in place of the activity. Many discussions occur around this time!

3. Morning Message: A message is written on the board each morning, and students must read it and often respond to it. The message will include notes about the day, and its special events. Then students are asked to respond with one or two words to a short prompt, such as “what is your favorite color?” (Of course, they get much more creative than that as the school year goes on.) The results can be used to make a bar graph later, or to have other discussions. Some teachers use this as an editing prompt and pepper their morning messages with errors. I never did this, but it’s totally up to you.

4. Sharing: This is usually one of the highlights of Morning Meeting for most students. Yes! Even in the upper grades! Three to four students are allowed to “share” each day and other students can ask questions about what the student has shared. An important element is that the sharing does not have to be an item….it can be anything that is going on in the student’s life. In fact, no more than a quarter of all sharing is an actual item. Students sign up to share in advance, on a board posted in the Morning Meeting space.

Setting Expectations for Morning Meeting

The book goes into this quite deeply, but if you are wanting to get started with morning right away, here are a few expectations I set from DAY ONE so that morning meeting runs smoothly and is a respectful, collaborative time.

• Arriving at Morning Meeting: I always had some sort of signal to tell kids it was time to clean up their morning work and join us at morning meeting. This was something we would practice, practice, practice at the beginning of the year. The expectation was that when they heard the signal, they’d immediately put away their things and quietly find a spot in the Morning Meeting circle. This happened quickly and quietly so that no time was wasted. Morning Meeting is included in our transition tracker. At the beginning of the year, I have a student timekeeper time how long each transition takes…. They LOVE trying to beat their time, and I love saving all those precious minutes for instruction!

• Forming a Circle: This could really fall under arrival, but I think it’s important to mention. We had a “rule” that we did not sit next to the same people each day when getting into the circle formation for Morning Meeting and that NOBODY was left out of the circle. I let children choose their space within the Morning Meeting circle, but I reserved the right to move anyone at any time. It also takes a few weeks, but after a while, students really learn how to form the circle without me having to ask them to make space for everyone. Setting these expectations up front saves headaches later!
• Respecting Talk Time: This may be the most important one! During sharing time, we set that expectation that whoever “had the floor” TRULY had the floor. So often while sharing, another kiddo would raise their hand and say, “OH! That happened to me too…” and proceed to tell their story. Since we really want students to feel like they are being heard, we teach kids to do a “me too” single or “connection” single to acknowledge that they relate to what’s being said but to not take the spotlight off of other students. We always encouraged students to share their connections with the sharer during resource or during another time! Morning Meeting discussions provide GREAT conversation starters for later!

Adapting Morning Meeting to the Upper Grades

When I first started teaching, I taught third grade, and Morning Meeting was easy! Kids LOVED all the cutesy greetings, they still adored sharing, and any activity made them grin. Moving to fourth grade was a little bit different, and I found that I needed to change it up to really engage them and make it worth their time. Here are some of the ways I made each part of Morning Meeting work for me!

I always had a morning message on the board when students walked in, but it was never as detailed as a typical Morning Meeting message. It would usually say something along the lines of, “Good Morning! I am so excited to see your smiling faces today. Today, we will practice our math skills by playing detective, and we will watch an exciting video to demonstrate cause and effect. Let’s make it a great day!” Then, I would typically add a VERY brief prompt, like, “What is one thing you are proud of?” After they come in every morning, students would have the opportunity to respond to that prompt on the whiteboard or on a piece of anchor chart paper, depending on where I wrote it. I typically did not add editing tasks or anything like that to our morning message, but I did take mental notes of which students didn’t contribute to the board. If I saw that there was a student who hadn’t responded in a while, I would make it a point throughout the day to quietly and casually ask him/her their answer to the next day’s prompt. This is a GREAT time to discreetly learn a TON about your students!

I keep track of morning message ideas on THIS Pinterest board. There are so many great ideas here!

The silly, drawn-out greetings just couldn’t keep my 4th graders engaged. They ended up getting super silly, twirling around on the floor, and not everyone would get to participate or WANT to participate. So instead, we usually keep it fairly brief and engaging.

The only requirement for our greeting was that each and every student looked into someone’s eyes and greeted them by name every single day. Whoever they greeted then greeted them back. We usually included a fist bump, hand shake, or elbow tap as well. But even that one second of connection gave life to some children early each morning! Since I greet my students at the door each morning, this ensured that every single child was earnestly greeted at least three times every morning (me, the person they chose to greet, and the person who greeted them). They were welcomed into our class.

Some of our favorite upper grades greetings include:

• The Ball Toss: What kid doesn’t LOVE a koosh ball? This usually showed up at least once a week in our room because it was quick and easy but well-loved. Everyone in the circle would stand up, and I’d toss the ball to a student and greet them by name. They’d greet me back, then choose another person to greet and toss it to them. Once they’ve been greeted, they sit down.
• The Shoe Greeting: Each student throws one shoe into the circle. You go around the circle and each student chooses a shoe, finds the person wearing the match, and does a simple handshake greeting.
• Order Up: This is a play on the old “line up according to birthdays without talking.” All year long, students would brainstorm ways that we could order ourselves, alphabetical, by birthday, by age, etc. and we would make our circle in that format and do a simple handshake greeting around the circle.
• Snowball Fight: This one literally never got old. As part of the morning message, I would tell students to write their name on a piece of paper and bring it to the morning meeting. When they arrive, I would have them crumple it up and throw it in the center. Going around the circle, each person picks a snowball and greets that child.
• Commonly Uncommon: This is a play on the common “Just like me!” game that is described in the official Morning Meeting book. Going around the circle, each child would say one unique thing about themselves, like, “Good morning! I am Mrs. Montero, and I absolutely LOVE learning about the Titanic.” Any child that agreed with that statement would stand up and say, “Hey! Me too!” Then, they would great one another. If there were a TON of me toos, the person would just choose a few.

There are truly so many different greeting options, but in the upper grades we always tried to simplify things.

Morning Meeting activities totally run the gamut. Sometimes, they can parallel the counseling guidance activities or address conflict issues in the classroom. We often use this time to read books and discuss how they can apply to our current classroom situations. At the beginning of the year, we use this time to discuss our character trait of the week. By teaching social skills and peer interactions before situations arise, without any real conflict, students can role-play compassion, respect, and all positive attributes without any emotional load attached. This builds their confidence in themselves and each other and in the safety of the classroom environment, as the teacher’s expectations for how student will treat each other is completely clear, and that the teacher will take the time to be sure everyone is heard and understood. That being said, here were a few of the more common activities we did during Morning Meeting in the upper grades.

• Picture Books: At least once a week, I include a picture book reading and discussion in my morning meeting plans. Here is one example of how I used a picture book at the beginning of the year. We read the book The Day You Begin (so good). Then the kids wrote down (anonymously) things that made them unique. We posted the sticky notes and read them aloud. The next day, if there were kids that had something in common, we placed a heart next to the sticky note to show some commonalities. This is just ONE example, but the options are truly endless with picture book.

• Drama Circles: I LOVE Drama Circles from Runde’s Room, and so did my students. We did one for just about every holiday and any other time I could fit them in. I can’t recommend these enough!
• Think It Through: This is a routine that I’ve talked about pretty extensively on the blog, and one that I will FOREVER be passionate about including. We typically do our morning work before morning meeting, and Think it Through is always at least one morning’s morning work, and then students also use it as an early finisher option. On Fridays, discussing that week’s content is our activity. I LOVE hearing what students think about their quotes, and the week’s activities always end up causing quite the discussion!

• Would You Rather: There are SO many options for free Would You Rather questions, and kids always eat them up! We would all stand in a line and then have one side of the room be one option and one side be the other. Sometimes I would let them engage in a little debate about it, too.
• Critical Thinking Moments: ANY of the ideas from my “Increasing Critical Thinking in Your Spare Time” blog post can be used as Morning Meeting activities. Many of them come straight from our Morning Meeting routines!

In the lower grades, we had a sharing sign up board for sharing time during Morning Meeting. This usually encouraged kids to bring something and turn it into more of a show and tell time. It always broke my heart when a kiddo REALLY wanted to share something on a particular day, but they weren’t signed up for the day. So, I did away with signing up, and I limit us to about 5 minutes of sharing depending on how long our activity was. Sometimes, 15 kids get to share, and sometimes 5 kids get to share. I tell the students that if there is something *particularly* important that they want to share during morning meeting to let me know ahead of time so that I can be sure to call on them. Most often in the upper grades, kids aren’t bringing toys to share, but they are just verbally sharing something important to them, which is so important.

Another huge component of sharing is question time. I mentioned above how important it is for students to not monopolize another child’s sharing time. That’s where questions come in handy! After a student shares, they can choose one or two students to ask questions (NOT make connections) about their share.

Wrapping Up

For me, the goal was always that Morning Meetings could eventually be run almost completely by the students. Ideally, a student is chosen to be the leader of morning meeting, and they decide, from a list provided by the teacher, on the day’s greeting and activity. This is a high honor, even in the upper grades.

Do you want even more ideas for classroom traditions that build community? Check out THIS post!

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Back to School 2020 is sure to be one for the history books. Desks 6 feet apart, plexiglass dividers, classes split into 2 rotations, in-person and online classes. What is a teacher to do when it comes to building a family in a classroom unlike any they’ve been in before?

Like most things this year, many of our favorite classroom icebreakers and team building activities won’t work because they won’t be social distancing friendly. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

Here are 10 social distancing and virtual classroom-friendly activities that will help you and your students get to know each other and set the foundations of a class family.

Ice Breakers for Social Distancing or the Virtual Classroom

1. Hello, My Name Is . . .

This is a fun game to play with your students in order to help them learn the names and some fun facts about their classmates. The idea is to use this game every day for 3 – 5 days in a row or play 3 – 5 rounds on one day. All you need are some “Hello, My Name Is . . .” name tags.

Each round will build on the last round using a different theme or question.

Round 1: Your Name

Have students write their name at the bottom of the white box on the name tag. They will need space to add other words in the white space in front of their name.

Round 2: Your favorite food

Have students write the name of their favorite food right above their name.

Round 3: Your favorite color

Have students add their favorite color on the name tag right before their favorite food.

Round 4: Your favorite hobby / activity

Have students add a favorite hobby or activity right before the color.

Round 5: Add an adjective that starts with the same letter as their name

Have students write an adjective that starts with the same letter of their name before the hobby.

To play, take turns going around the room introducing yourself according to the theme or question for that round. Each introduction should start with the words “Hello, my name is . . .” After each introduction, the class responds with “Hi ________!” repeating what the student said.

Here’s a Round 1 example:

Student 1: Hello, my name is Mary.
Class: Hi, Mary.
Student 2: Hello, my name is Jonathan.
Class: Hi, Jonathan.

For Round 2 each person will add their favorite food before their name. It might sound like this:

Student 1: Hello, my name is sushi Mary.
Class: Hi, sushi Mary.
Student 2: Hello, my name is taco Jonathan.
Class: Hi, taco Jonathan.

For Round 3 each person will add their favorite color to their name like this:

Student 1: Hello, my name is green sushi Mary.
Class: Hi, green sushi Mary.
Student 2: Hello, my name is blue taco Jonathan.
Class: Hi, blue taco Jonathan.

For Round 4 it’s time to add a hobby to the mix.

Student 1: Hello, my name is singing green sushi Mary.
Class: Hi, singing green sushi Mary.
Student 2: Hello, my name is reading blue taco Jonathan.
Class: Hi, reading blue taco Jonathan.

For Round 5 each person will add an adjective that starts with the same letter as their name.

Student 1: Hello, my name is marvelous singing green sushi Mary.
Class: Hi, marvelous singing green sushi Mary.
Student 2: Hello, my name is jovial reading blue taco Jonathan.
Class: Hi, jovial reading blue taco Jonathan.

You can make this game last as many rounds as you want by simply adding or taking off themes or questions. However, it is the repetitive nature of the game, and the silly answers, that help students remember each other’s name and facts.

2. Two Truths and a Lie

This is a fun, classic game that allows students to share some little known facts about themselves while trying to stump their classmates too. Each student will write down two true statements and one lie about themselves. Let them know that they can put these statements in any order as the goal is for the class to try to figure out which one is the lie. Although this can be done without writing it down, I have found that with elementary-aged students it is very beneficial to give students thinking time first. Otherwise, you end up with students who try to think when it is their turn and it makes the truths and lie very obvious.

After everyone is done writing down their sentences, then go around the room having students read their 3 statements. The class will then vote on which they think is the lie. After the vote, the student will reveal the lie and can explain the truths if there is time.

This game could also be spread apart over many days. After students write down their three statements, have them turn in their papers. Then as time is available, the teacher will choose a paper, have the student stand, and then the teacher will read the 3 statements. The class votes on which they think is the lie. After the vote, the student reveals the real lie and can explain the truths.

3. Playdough Power

For this activity, each student will need their own small container of play dough. Since students are most likely not able to share supplies, they can keep this in their desk or with their supplies to use again and again.

This is one of my absolute favorite first day of school activities. I love to have it on the students’ desks ready for them to start when they first arrive. Having an activity that they jump right into that doesn’t require them knowing anyone is a great way to ease the first day jitters.

Have students build something out of playdough that represents them or shares something about them. Here’s some examples:

● Build your favorite animal
● Build your favorite food
● Build something that shows your hobby or something you like to do
● If you were an animal, what animal would you be? Build it.
● Build something that represents your favorite TV show.
● Build something that shows what you did over the summer.
● Build what you ate for breakfast.

After students build, then have a share time where students show what they built and tell how it relates to them. This activity could easily be repeated every morning during the first week of school, or longer, using a different build prompt each time.

4. Would You Rather

Get to know your students, their likes, dislikes, personalities and more with a game of Would You Rather. Grab some Would You Rather questions from the internet and you are ready to begin. All you have to do is ask students the question and then give them a way to respond. For social distancing choose actions they can easily complete at their desk space like stand or sit. This makes for a great movement break to use throughout the first few days of school, too!

Let the students know that you are going to ask them to choose between two options. It’s okay if they like both or don’t like either, their job is to make a choice between the two. Let them know that if they like the first option best, they will stand up.  If they like the second option best, they sit in their seat.

Then ask the Would You Rather question and give the students time to respond with your chosen signals.  After each question, call on 2-3 students with each answer and have them explain why they chose their answer.

5. Quiz Time

Make your first pop quiz of the year about the class. Keep notes of the things you learn about your students during your ice breakers and get-to-know-you activities. Then at the end of the first week, create a pop quiz asking questions about what you learned. Your students will love being the stars of the questions!

You can make it a paper and pencil quiz or use an app like Kahoot or Google Forms to make a digital pop quiz. This is a great way to introduce a new type of digital activity that you will use during the year too! 

Getting to Know You Activities for Remote Learning:

Are you looking for a fun and engaging way for students to learn about each other? I have made my Getting to Know You back to School Task Cards DIGITAL! But these aren’t just task cards… They now include a to-slide Google Slides activity so students can put together an ebook all about them! It is possibly one of my favorite creations. If you still want to go the traditional task card route but don’t want to play SCOOT, I have also provided Google Slides versions of each of the cards so that you can project them at the front of the class.

Social Distancing or Virtual Team Building Activities

6. Secret Handshake

Build a sense of classroom community with a class secret “handshake.” Tell the class that you are going to create a secret handshake or motion that you can use with each other during the year.  Let the class brainstorm some motions and then put together a simple secret handshake.

Some possible motions include:

● Air High 5’s
● Air First Bumps
● Air Hand Shakes
● Touching a body part like the shoulder, nose or head
● Wiggling or Moving a body part
● Turning Around

Try to develop a series that is about 5 movements or 5 seconds long. After you decide on the class secret handshake, then practice it a few times. Continue to practice it multiple times a day so that students can learn it quickly. Then use it as you say good morning, when you pick the class up from lunch or before you say goodbye for the day.

7. 20 Questions

Play a game of 20 questions (or use the number that is the same as the number of students you have so that each person can ask 1 question). Choose 1 person to pick a secret word (nouns usually work best) and have them write it down or tell the teacher. Then challenge the class to work together to figure out what the person is. This will require students to listen to each other’s questions, the answers and thinking about related follow-up questions that might help to narrow down the secret word.

After everyone has asked a question, then let each student take one guess.

8. Race to 100

This is a fun game that takes teamwork, cooperation and listening skills. Challenge the class to count to 100 as quickly as possible without two people talking at the same time. Once the game begins, they are only allowed to say the numbers from 1 to 100. If two people talk at the same time they must start over with 1. If the numbers are repeated or said out of order, the counting must start again at 1. It adds an element of competition if you time them or if you set a time limit.

This game works really well as a discussion starter for teamwork. After playing a couple of times, stop and talk about the difficulties and what could make it more successful. Then give the students 1-2 minutes of planning time allowing only one person to talk at a time during the planning time too.

After planning, let the class try the Race to 100 again. Then talk about how this attempt was the same or different from the other attempts. If it was more successful, have the class discuss the reasons why. Hopefully, these reasons lead back to planning and teamwork!

9. 5 Word Story

You are going to tell a story as a class. The catch, each student may only say 5 words at a time. Before you begin, make sure that everyone knows the speaking order so that you don’t have to stop your story to figure out whose turn it is.

If you have space for students to spread out and sit in a circle around the room, this is probably the easiest option. If students are at their desks, make sure that everyone knows who they speak after.  You can also list the names of the students on the board and use that order. Just have a plan and make sure everyone knows it.

Then start the story. As you say the first 5 words of the story, hold up your hand and raise one finger for each word. Then look at the student who is next so they can continue the story. It might sound like this:

Teacher: Once upon a time a
Student 1: dog was running in a
Student 2: park. The dog was brown
Student 3: and white with a black
Student 4: spot over his left eye.
Student 5: A giant green and yellow
Student 6: lizard was chasing the dog
Student 7: through the park as it
Student 8: ran and looked around for

You can finish the story as a class or let it be the start of writing prompt. After everyone has a chance to add 5 words, challenge the students to finish the story in their writing journals.

10. All Linked Up

So have you ever heard of the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”? You know, that game where you can connect any actor or actress with Kevin Bacon with 6 or less connections. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, take a sec and Google it. And, if you have no idea who Kevin Bacon is, well, just forget you read this paragraph and keep reading because Kevin Bacon really has nothing to do with this entire blog post, but I digress.

The idea of All Linked Up is to see if you can connect everyone in your class through common names, interests or activities.  To do this, students will need to know things about each other, so this one might be best played at the end of the week or during the second or third week of school.

To start out, make the connections anything that the students have in common. It might be something like this:

Mary is connected to Mike, Margaret and Matthew because all of their names all start with M. Matthew is connected to Sarah because they both have 2 brothers. Sarah is connected to Kim, Jennifer and Lola because they all like the color pink. Lola is connected to Jonathan because they both like to read. And so on . . .

Once you can connect the whole class in a few different ways, you might try limiting the connections to one or two commonalities like favorite foods or members of the family. Or challenge the class to see if they can connect everyone in 10 or less links.

There’s something about knowing that you are in some way connected with your entire class that helps you feel like you are part of something bigger than yourself. You could also build a paper chain as a representation of these connections and keep it hanging in the classroom.

Teaching students the difference between literal and inferential thinking is one of my must-do lessons at the beginning of every single school year, no matter which elementary grade I’m teaching. I have talked about this so many times, but I wanted to put all of these inference anchor charts in ONE PLACE for easy access!

Introducing the idea of how we make an inference truly makes all the difference. This foundation of skills is crucial before we continue on with the rest of our reading skills and novels for the year!

Surprise, surprise! I start teaching this skill using a picture… if you have spent some time perusing my blog, you’ll know that I introduce just about every single reading skill by using a picture. You can read other posts about how I use pictures HERE and HERE.

For this inference lesson, we begin by talking about the difference between a literal observation and the inferences we make based on those observations (and our prior knowledge), then we totally dissect a picture. It is so fun, engaging, and really solidifies understanding about the difference between a literal observation and an inferential observation. It’s a quick lesson, but so, so meaningful.

I have done this introduction lesson a few different ways over the years, but it always leads to similar discussions. Here are a few of pictures of the inference anchor charts we created together as we discussed the difference between literal and inferential observations. You can do one, two, three, or all four different variations over the course of a week to get your students really SOLID in their inference skills!

This inference anchor chart was really easy to create (and done with third graders). The words in pink are LITERAL observations, and then the blue words describe the inference students make based on the inference.

This anchor chart is slightly more advanced (and I discuss it more on THIS blog post), and it was created with 4th and 5th graders. They each used their own sticky notes to come up with an observation and a follow-up inference based on that observation.

This anchor chart was made with 4th graders, and instead of connecting the two ideas, we totally separated them. I discuss this lesson more HERE.

This lesson was done with advanced 2nd graders who were really just learning about the difference between literal and inferential thinking. It’s more basic, but still very impactful. It’s a great starting point.

After this lesson, I have my students work on making there own observe/infer charts. I’ve shared it here before, but I’ll link it again because I think it’s the PERFECT follow up to this whole-class lesson. You can download this free follow up inference lesson HERE

After I feel like students have a good grasp of this, we do a slow transition from simply inferring from pictures to inferring from texts. The students and I complete one Inference Using Pictures to Teach Reading Skills page together to introduce how this can be applied to our reading. You can access this resource HERE (it includes similar pages for many other skills).

After we have completed several of these pages together (over the course of several day), we transition to text only inferences using these inference task cards. You can find these cards HERE.

With this foundation of learning, my students are ready to start tackling inferences in novels, read alouds, and more!

As most schools head back to in-person learning soon, I want to share several essentials for how I start my school year. We all know how very important it is to build strong relationships, routines, and procedures, which in turn set high expectations in the classroom. Here are three quick ways I start to accomplish that over the first few days of school.

My One Rule: Respect

I only have ONE rule in my classroom… RESPECT. Of course, I don’t just tell my students this is our only rule. There is a short, student-centered process that we go through to end up at this one rule. I’ve talked about this before, and you can learn all about it HERE. I can’t tell you what a game-changer it is for classroom management!

Classroom Charter

Several years ago, the school where I taught implemented RULER for social and emotional support of students. One aspect that I LOVED about RULER was creating a classroom charter with students. It was a multi-day process, but the end result is so important. Spelling it all out may seem tedious and unnecessary, but it was refreshing and the process challenged students!

First, ask your students to brainstorm words or phrases to describe HOW they want to feel in the classroom. Make a HUGE list of those words. As a class, narrow it down to the most important words. For each word, brainstorm what you will do as a class to help make sure everyone feels that way. Finally, discuss with students what they can do if they find they need support in any of these areas. It is a bit longer of a process (I do it over the course of several days), but it’s beautiful to see students discuss all of these aspects of the classroom community! I’d highly recommend it.

Growth Mindset

Growth Mindset has truly become a staple in my classroom. I have had a growth mindset display for years, and below is a picture of my most recent one. This year, I finally finished creating a resource that had been on my to-do list for YEARS, and I am so pleased with it!

The first four pages introduce students to the concept of growth mindset, including ways to change their mindset, why it’s important, and the brain research supporting it. HERE IS THE BEST PART! The next five pages include paired passages focusing on characters (fictional and real) who have overcome obstacles by using a growth mindset. There are annotation questions and reflection questions included for each set of growth mindset questions. I am using this resource with my own kids, and so far, it has been a wonderful, eye-opening success! You can learn more about it HERE.

Most schools are in session now (whether virtually or in-person), and I know that year after year, the first thing that most teachers teach in math is place value! Whether or not your curriculum and standards are full of place value review, it is such a crucial skill to master when preparing for most other math concepts.

I have SO many place value activities, and you can read all about my place value unit HERE. This year, I added a new free place value resource that will really get your students thinking! It is so easy to set up, and this hands-on place value activity really encourages your students to think critically about place value, the difference between value and quantity, and the different ways to write a number. First, you will need a set of place value disks. I purchased these place value disks on Amazon (click HERE for an affiliate link if you’d like to purchase them), but I also included some printable “disks” at the end of the file if you don’t want to purchase them! I took out the 1,000,000 disks since I was working with 3rd graders, but you can always leave them in to meet the needs of your students.

The first page has students draw a certain number of disks, then write the number in a variety of different ways. I encourage you to compare answers on this one to show that even though everyone has 12 disks (each disk with a different value), some people will have a HUGE number whereas others will not. Once they have done that task, students are given parts of the numbers, either in expanded form, word form, or standard form, and they need to find the appropriate disks to make the number. This is my favorite part because I love to see students think critically about math!

This resource is FREE by clicking here! 

Are you looking for even more place value resources? I have place value error analysis, a place value math project, place value task cards, and so much more!

When I student taught, I spent half a semester in 5th grade and half a semester in kindergarten. It was jarring moving between 5th grade and kindergarten, to say the least! When I got a job that spring, I was hired for a 3rd grade position… smack dab in the middle of what I’d been prepared for. Through the years, I have worked with students in all grade levels K-5 in a variety of positions: classroom teacher, interventionist, and gifted coordinator. While it’s obvious that each grade level and age level will present its own unique celebrations and challenges, there is a general shift that occurs between the primary and upper grades.

A question that often comes up in my Facebook Group, Inspired in Upper Elementary, is: “Help! I’ve always been a primary grades teacher, and now I’m moving to the upper grades. What do I need to know?”

If you are considering or facing a move from primary to upper elementary grades, here are some things to think about to help make it a smooth transition.

Children in the lower primary grades are truly “littles.” Sticky hands, hugs, and innocent wondering questions are all a part of the teaching package. As their teacher, you are tasked with teaching them the very foundations of how to be a student. Sure, this includes a ton of academic skills, but also how to listen attentively, how to walk in a line, and how to be a good friend/classmate. Spoiler Alert: You’ll still be teaching those same skills in 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade, but you’ll need some new tricks up your sleeve. Holding bubbles in your mouth while walking down the hall just won’t have the same effect as it did in kinder.

Once students hit 3rd or 4th grade, they are seasoned veterans of school. They know how they should operate within a classroom, and they know the basics of functioning within a classroom community. However, they all need reminders, practice, and reinforcement of appropriate behaviors. (I should also add that for ANY teacher beginning a new school year, it’s so important to remember that your expectations may vary widely from their former teacher. Keep this in mind as you embark on a new school year.)

When I welcomed my first group of 3rd graders after having student taught in 5th grade, I thought their three years of school would have prepared them for the basics of studenthood. I gave them way too much freedom far too quickly, and I learned that they still need ample guidance on how to work and learn in a new classroom.

Of course, there’s more to the upper grades than just mastering lining up a rowdy group of 10-year-olds for recess. In the upper grades, social relationships get more complicated, and some of their earlier innocence has matured.

Third graders are sweet as pie, and most are still learning about exercising their independence in a school setting. In third grade, we really focused on developing confidence through a growth mindset and analyzing multiple intelligences and learning styles so that they had a greater self-awareness of themselves as learners. The growth from the beginning of the year third graders to the end of the year third graders is ASTOUNDING. Truly. You will watch them mature before your very eyes. I think third grade is one of the most significant years of change in elementary school.

Fourth graders are still so sweet and kind, and they are becoming much more independent. They are typically starting to function really well in small group settings, and fourth graders have an AMAZING sense of humor. Most third and fourth graders still really love their teachers and school, and they will do just about anything you ask of them. Some will really start to dabble in “big kid” issues toward the end of the year but are usually still receptive to teacher advice and guidance.

By 5th grade (sometimes 4th grade), students are like mini-tweens. I love, love, love 5th graders (can you tell I really love upper elementary kids?). They are funny, independent, and really figuring out who they are are PEOPLE and students. Friendship challenges are common, so building a classroom community and open communication are crucial. Keep an eye on recess-happenings so that you have a good idea of friendship dynamics and any trouble that might be brewing.

Upper grades children are articulate and can do all of those things you used to teach – things like reading and math! Chances are there will be things that you will miss about teaching “littles,” but understand there are positive trade-offs you will definitely appreciate (fifth graders know a good corny joke when they hear one!).

Yep. Academics are very different in the upper grades. I know this is a given, but think long and hard about those differences as you embark on this new journey.

In the upper grades, I really find it crucial to let my students explore topics that interest them. At this age, many are finding sports, activities, and topics that they can’t get enough of. LEAN into this because this is a way to nearly guarantee engagement. Incorporate student choice as much as you can — it fosters independence, too!

Collaboration is one of my favorite things about my Inspired by Upper Elementary Facebook group. It’s a safe place where upper elementary teachers can ask questions, share ideas, and collaborate with one another. If you haven’t visited, you should definitely check it out!

Recently, a teacher asked about the pros and cons of departmentalizing in upper elementary. The discussion that followed was amazing and included a ton of great thoughts, tips and ideas. The whole discussion had me reflecting on the pros and cons of
departmentalizing in elementary schools…

• By departmentalizing, you are not spending as much time with your students. You lose time and activities that help to build relationships with students. Numerous teachers that transitioned from a self-contained classroom to a departmentalized approach felt that they did not have as strong of relationships with their students as they had in a self-contained setting. They also felt that they did not get to know their students as well as in previous years. (Note: Many teachers shared that although they were worried about this at the beginning of the year, it really didn’t come to fruition. They were able to be more intentional in their relationship building and didn’t see as much of a difference. I will note that when I was co-teaching and only seeing my students half the time, I was still able to build great relationship with my students.)

PRO:

• Departmentalizing gives students multiple
  teachers they can go to for support in academics or life.  Sometimes
  a student does not “click” with one teacher but they will with another
  teacher.

• I really
  hesitated to mention this one, but I think it’s important. We all know that not every student and teacher can have an ideal
  relationship.  When
  students/teachers don’t necessarily see eye to eye, many teachers note
  that challenging relationships are usually less strained when students
  move to another teacher(s) for part of the day.  Moving from class to
  class seemed to actually benefit some of the more challenging
  relationships, caused less teacher stress, and made for a better learning
  environment for everyone.

I loved reading how much
passion there was from both sides of this issue.  I love that teachers
want to build strong relationships with their students.  If this is
something that is important to you (and it really, really should be), then I
believe it can happen in either setting.  Yes, it might look a bit
different in a departmentalized setting, but that doesn’t mean good
student/teacher relationships can’t happen.  Be intentional about making
building relationships an important part of your classroom environment.

Recommendations: If you decide to go with this approach, it’s
best for students to have a homeroom teacher and a “home base.” This
way, students still get the benefits of having daily morning meetings, team
building activities, and more. On the same topic, be sure you have plenty of
opportunities for students in separate homerooms to work with one another.

Consistency

Whether you’ve been a
teacher, parent, or both, you probably know that kids thrive with
consistency.  Children do best when there is a consistent routine and
consistent expectations.  So how does departmentalizing impact
consistency?

CON:

• By changing teachers multiple times throughout
  the day, students lose the consistency and routine that they so thrive
  on.  They tend to struggle more than in a self-contained classroom
  because of the differences amongst teachers, changing expectations and
  classroom environments.

• Students with special needs tend to have a
  much more difficult time adjusting to the change and transition from
  teacher to teacher.

PRO:

• While
  consistency is very important for young children, as they get older they
  are better able to adapt to change.  As students enter middle school,
  changing classes and teachers will simply be a requirement. 
  Departmentalizing with a team of 2 or 3 teachers in elementary school
  helps to prepare students for the future and ease the transition later
  on.  Departmentalizing in upper elementary is a good baby step to
  help students get from self-contained elementary classes to middle
  school.  

• Consistency does not mean nothing
  changes.  Students in a self-contained classroom often change for
  specials, so they’ve likely already been prepared for the next step of
  changing core teachers.  Students can have consistency in a
  departmentalized setting even when they change teachers and classrooms.
  The consistency comes from classroom expectations. 

• Students with
  special needs have been successful in departmentalizing.  The
  switching of teachers becomes their consistency.  Helping them know
  what to expect and preparing them for the changes is a great way to help
  them learn the new routine that comes with departmentalizing.

One of the common themes in
this online discussion was the need for team teachers to work together. 
Many teachers were quick to say that consistency can happen when teachers work
as a team to provide consistent classroom management routines, student
expectations for behavior and work completion.  However, these same
teachers also said that when the team teachers are too different and don’t work
well together that the consistency will not be there and the students will be
the only ones that suffer. 

Recommendation: Consistency can be achieved by having a
consistent routine each day within your departmentalized schedule. Try not to
deviate from that routine on a regular basis.

Mastery in Subject Area

CON:

• In a
  self-contained classroom, the teacher is responsible for teaching all of
  the subject areas.  It is difficult and time-consuming to truly get
  to know the standards for all of the curriculum (possible understatement
  of the year! Ha!). 

• Teachers spend a
  lot of time with lesson planning for all the subject areas. A. Lot. Of.
  Time.

• By only focusing
  on one or two subject areas, you can become out of touch with the
  standards and best practices in other areas. 

• There is a great
  benefit to cross-curricular, transdisciplinary teaching for students to
  see how different skills and ideas can work together.  Having taught in an IB school where all
  learning is supposed to be transdisciplinary, it would be a huge challenge
  to only teach one subject.

PRO:

• By focusing on
  one or two subject areas, teachers can dig deep into the standards and
  develop a teaching specialty. Students benefit from a more focused
  teacher. 

• Less time is
  spent on lesson planning freeing up more time for developing new lesson
  activities for students.

• Teachers can
  work together to create cross-curricular lessons that help meet standards
  for different subjects.  

• With less time
  spent on lesson planning, it makes teacher/life balance a lot easier.

• Students benefit
  when a teacher gets to focus on the subject they are passionate about or
  that is their strength.

It is important to note
here that numerous people added this thought: Departmentalizing works well when
teachers are assigned to teach an area they are strong in.  However, it
can be disastrous when this doesn’t happen.  One teacher shared about
being placed in a situation to teach language arts and social studies despite
her strengths being in math and science.  She described the struggles she
had and how difficult it was. Ultimately, she said it was the hardest year of
teaching she had ever had and that she felt like she was not as good of a
teacher for her students as she had been in previous years.

Recommendations: Communicating with the other teachers on your
team will be so important so that you can still integrate cross-curricular
themes as much as possible. This can be as easy as a quick 10-minute meeting
each week where you discuss your themes and concepts for the upcoming weeks so
that you can start considering how you can integrate them into YOUR content.

Use of Time

Another factor to consider
when deciding whether to departmentalize or have self-contained classes is the
use of time.

CON:

• Transitioning
  from class to class wastes a lot time, no matter how well-prepared our
  students are.

• You lose
  flexibility when you have to stay on a specific schedule.  In a
  self-contained class, if you finish early you can move on, or if a lesson
  runs a little over you can adjust the schedule or activities.

• When activities
  like assemblies, field trips, and class pictures happen, one class ends up
  losing time in a specific subject matter while other classes would not.

• It is more
  difficult to adjust to the needs of the students when you have multiple
  classes, and you are trying to keep them all together.  Not all
  classes learn the same and some classes may need more time on a skill or
  concept and another class may move quickly through. (Personal Note:
  This can be alleviated somewhat by grouping your classes, but that is a
  blog topic for another day!)

  

PRO:

• Transitions make great brain breaks.  Students truly do need a little downtime between lessons, and the transition from one class or teacher to another provides not only a break but is also a great visual for the mental switch that has to happen when you move from one subject matter to another.

• Transitions do
  not have to take a long time.  Students can learn how to transition
  quickly with well-defined procedures and expectations.

• When team
  teachers work well together and understand how important it is to be flexible, they can adjust class times
  to account for occasional schedule changes.  One teacher shared how
  they teach on a block schedule so that each class has the same amount of
  time together but also the same number of mornings and afternoons since
  students often do better in the morning.

Collaboration

The ability to work
together to solve problems or create amazing learning opportunities is a such an important part of teaching.  I am a firm believer that we can do great
things on our own, but we can be even better together.

CON:

• In a
  self-contained classroom, there is only one teacher to figure out how to
  address the needs of struggling students, behavior issues or other
  concerns.  While other teachers can give ideas they do not have
  in-person and first-hand experience with that student  like the
  primary teacher.

• In smaller
  schools especially, departmentalizing often means that there is only one teacher per
  grade level teaching a specific subject.  This leaves the teacher as
  the sole creator of lessons with no one to share ideas with, collaborate
  with or learn from.

PRO:

• Departmentalizing allows multiple teachers to have first-hand insight into problems a
  student may be having.  Teachers can work together to help resolve behavior issues or learning struggles.  Numerous teachers mentioned how helpful it was to have another teacher who was seeing similar issues in a student.  Not only was it a good confirmation, but it helped to
  have someone to talk to about a student’s issues. 

• Teachers can
  collaborate on what is working well in a class to help students in other
  areas.

• When doing a two
  way split where each class has two teachers, there are often multiple
  teams per grade level.  This gives each subject area two or more
  teachers that can plan and collaborate together. If this isn’t possible, be sure to join subject-specific Facebook groups for support and request special PD opportunities to help hone your craft!

Much of collaboration comes
down to the people involved.  If teachers choose to collaborate and work
with each other, it can be beautiful in both a self-contained or
departmentalized setting.

A Note on the Research…

Beyond anecdotes and advice, it’s also important to consider the research on departmentalizing in the elementary classroom.  HERE is a really interesting article on it.

My Take-Aways . . .

If you are looking for an
answer as to whether you should departmentalize, you are not going to find it
here.  Why?  Well, because there are many factors that must be
considered in this decision.  Every school is different, teachers are different,
students are different.  What might be best for my school might not be
best for yours.  So while I won’t tell you what to do, I will share some
of my take aways from this important discussion:

1. The pairing of
   team teachers is really important.  Whether this is done by the
   administration or the teachers, this is something that must be done with
   care. It’s important to make sure that teachers that are teamed up work
   well together, communicate well together, have consistent expectations, and
   are willing to work together and practice flexibility.
2. The teaching
   assignment is another important decision that must be made.  Teachers
   should be able to give input into areas they feel they are stronger in,
   subjects they enjoy teaching or are passionate about.
3. Teaching assignments
   should be fairly distributed.  Language Arts instruction is more than
   one subject (Reading, Writing, Grammar, Spelling)  and often carries
   with it the task of teaching and grading essays.  This work load is
   not the same as other subject areas and this should be taken into
   consideration when making teacher assignments.
4. In upper
   elementary, a teacher team of 2 or 3 appears to be more successful and
   less overwhelming for students than switching classes with 4 or more
   teachers.  This seems to be the “sweet spot” for helping prepare
   students for middle school while still providing them the consistency and
   guidance they need at this age.
5. Not all pros and
   cons are equal.  It’s important to prioritize the things that will
   make the classroom learning environment the best it can be for our
   students.  One teacher recommends making a pro/con list and then
   categorizing each as: pro for the student / pro for the teacher / con for
   the student / con for the teacher.  I really liked this suggestion
   and found that it helps to keep the decision focused on what is best for
   the students.  And remember that just because it is pro teacher
   doesn’t mean it is con for the student.  A happy and less stressed
   teacher can make for a better learning environment which is a pro for
   students too!

What Are Your Thoughts?

I’d love to hear your
thoughts on departmentalizing.  Join the discussion by leaving your
comments below.  If this is something you are looking into, then make sure
to pin this to your favorite classroom Pinterest board so you can come back
when you need to.  Also, feel free to share this with other teachers or
administrators as part of your discussion on departmentalizing in upper
elementary.

Every year that I walk into a classroom, I have the same goal: build our class into warm, welcoming community that functions like a great, big extended family. The goal is to take 20 to 30 people who might not know each other, who might not have a single thing in common, and who might not always get along, and bring them together in a way that they look forward to being together, support and encourage one another and help each other through the learning process. It might be a lofty goal, but it’s an important one that helps to create an overall safe and effective learning environment. Here are some of my favorite tried and true activities to help build community in the classroom.

There are some things we do in class every. single. day that help to build the classroom community! No, I’m not talking about taking attendance or getting lunch count, although I HAVE heard of some teachers adding a fun little twist to these daily tasks (like singing it) and that could become a tradition.

Here, I’m focusing on special activities that make students feel welcome and like they are part of something bigger than themselves. Having spent years working in an International Baccalaureate (IB) School, it was always a goal of mine that students see that there is so much more beyond the walls of their home, school, city, state, and country. Building this type of community is one small way of doing just that.

Class Greeting

Every day, I greet my students at the door to our classroom. I know the mornings are busy, but this is top priority for me as students enter.

I want them to know that I am happy they are there and welcome them in with a smile. Most days we give each other a warm handshake, some days we high-five, some days we fist bump and others we use silly voices. But my most favorite way to greet my students is with a “secret handshake” that has become popular on social media over the years. A few years ago, I started coming up with a special way to do this. Sometimes I create the movement (it’s not just a handshake – that would be too boring) and other years we create it as a class.

You can use it when students arrive in the morning, when they leave for the day, or any time you need a moment of connection during the day. It’s ours and it becomes a special form of communication just for us.

Want to create your own secret class greeting? I’d suggest keeping it short, like 2 or 3 simple motions, no more than about 5 seconds, and have fun with it. Sure, you might look silly, but at least you’ll look silly together.

I know that social media has popularized each student have their own personal secret handshake, but I have never done that, primarily because I have the coordination of a donkey (?? are donkeys uncoordinated? That just felt like the right analogy to me in the moment) and it would take me all year to memorize 30 separate handshakes.

Morning Meeting

Now, before you stop me and tell me that Morning Meeting is only for primary grades, hear me out. Morning meeting can be a very valuable and special time for older kids too! I will never have a classroom where I don’t incorporate some form of morning meeting every day.

You don’t have to review the calendar or sing a song every morning (although kids of all ages LOVES a good song, whether or not they will admit it upfront). Instead, make it an important part of the day that helps everyone get on the same page.

I have a HUGE post all about Morning Meeting HERE, but here are a few suggestions of things you could do to make morning meeting a community building time in your classroom.

• Review the schedule for the day and help everyone mentally prepare for the day ahead. This is especially helpful if you have any schedule changes that need to be discussed.
• I always let a few people share each day. In the lower grades, I would have students sign up to share, but in the upper grades, I was able to make it more flexible and allow children to raise their hands to share whatever is on their mind.
• This Day in History is a fun way to learn some fun historical facts while focusing on the day. You’d be surprised at how quickly the kids begin to anticipate it.
• It is during morning meeting that we share our reflections on the Quote of the Day from Think it Through. We usually do this on Friday. I have students share out what they think the quote means, and it always ends up in a beautiful discussion. This is a great time to reinforce growth mindset principles, dig into character traits or connect our daily lives with important people from history.
• Word of the Day is a great way to build student vocabulary in less than a minute. Share the word and the definition then write it on the board so the kids see it all day long. Have a special class cheer or small reward for any student who can use the word correctly during the day.
• Have a quick write journal that gets your students writing for about 5 minutes every morning. Use a writing prompt that will lead to class discussion, or just have a discussion based on the prompt. Limit the writing time and then have a time of sharing or discussion. Writing prompts that focus on emotions, character traits and encouraging classmates is a great way to build community.

Now you don’t have to do all of these at one time. Choose one or two you like best and do them every day. If you like many of the ideas, choose a different one for each day of the week and develop a weekly morning meeting routine.

Daily Praise & Reflection

At the end of each day, I like to have a time of daily praise or reflection. Sometimes it’s me giving praise to the students and other times it is peer praise. What’s great about this is that depending on the time available it could be a super-fast 30 seconds of praise or it could fill 5 minutes. It’s a great way to build up students, acknowledge their effort and to let them know that you notice the little things. One of the things that I am very intentional about with praise is focusing on the action, the character trait or the skill that was shown, and I teach my students to do the same. In my room we don’t typically focus on praising appearance, clothes or possessions.

Although I don’t have a set list that I follow or an order for giving praise, I do make sure that every student receives public praise. Not only does it go a long way in building the teacher/student relationship, but it also helps to reinforce positive choices. Find the positive, reinforce it, and watch as your students repeat it day after day. I have watched students who have struggled with poor classroom behavior or self-esteem have dramatic improvements because of Daily Praise.

I also love hearing my students reflect on their day’s work. Sometimes instead of Daily Praise, we also do a daily reflection. We talk about the best parts of the day (doesn’t HAVE to be academic in nature), and we even reflect on some parts of the day that didn’t go as well as they could have.

Special Occasion Class Traditions

I also like to incorporate some class traditions on special occasions too. These might only happen occasionally during the year, or they might be a once a year event that students experience together. Oftentimes, these are the traditions that kids may even already know about before they come into my classroom because they’ve heard about them through the grapevine!

Mini Room Transformations

I am a huge proponent of mini room transformations when you can apply them to specific skills you are teaching. They most often coincide with my math and reading projects, but we also do a Book Tasting several times throughout the year. At the beginning of the year, I always transform my room into a little detective zone for our Place Value Detective Project. It’s super basic– I just hang up some caution tape, purchase magnifying glasses at Oriental Trading, and get a stamp pad for students to fingerprint their papers when they finish each section. I do this for several different units (or anytime I can apply it to academics), and it has become a tradition in my classroom that students rave about! It does NOT need to be over the top to be engaging and meaningful!

Class Rewards

This is a pretty personal tradition, and you have to find one that works really well for your class, your students, and your classroom management style. I have done a variety of different reward systems, but students seem to gravitate toward a “ticket” system most often. They can earn tickets as “gotchas” for literally ANYTHING positive. They can’t lose them. The best part is that at the end of the week or at random (they especially love when I randomly pick up the ticket tub), I pull a few tickets out of the jar and they can choose a small prize. SMALL is key. They are usually pencils, cool markers and pens, little doodads, etc. I ask for donations at the beginning of the year and then collect things on sale as I see them.

Big Kid Show and Tell

Kids love show and tell…ESPECIALLY the big kids. They love sharing things about themselves and their lives. Building relationships happens when we share and get to know each other at a deeper level. So although I know the rigorous demands on your time, I also know that there is a great benefit to show and tell. I usually try to incorporate show and tell into morning meeting, but here are a few extra ideas about how I connect show and tell to the learning standards so that we can meet both a community building and academic goals:

• Use show and tell to meet the speaking and listening standards
• Have a themed show and tell that is connected to something you are learning about
• Have a written show and tell where students bring in a picture of themselves with the show and tell item and then write about it

I try to have a different sharing topic once a month for morning meeting, but there are times when we skip a month, and I DO let students choose their own sharing during morning meeting, too. Here are a few themed show and tell topics to get you started:

1. This week we are learning about different types of angles. Bring in a show and tell item that has at least 1 obtuse angle, 1 acute angle and 1 right angle. Yep – all three angles in one item! You will have 1 minute to tell about the item and identify the angles.
2. This month we are focusing on the character trait of bravery. Bring in a picture or an item and share about a time you witnessed bravery or you yourself were brave.
3. In science, we just learned about Sir Isaac Newton and his laws of motion. This month’s show and tell will focus on things that move. Bring in an item or a picture of a moving object and be ready to tell us what Sir Isaac Newton would have to say about it. No living things may be brought to class – bring a picture instead!

With some creative thinking, Show and Tell can be used to not only support your standards, but also to get your students applying and analyzing their learning and connecting it to real, everyday life.

Throwback Thursday

Have you ever had a great teaching idea on the spur of the moment? That’s how Throwback Thursday started. You see, it was a Thursday afternoon after a long week of test prep and I found myself staring at the glazed-over eyes of my students. I knew I couldn’t just keep going, so I started thinking of something to do to take a break. Then I remembered the social media post I saw that morning – a Throwback Thursday image of my friend and her family. Before I realized what I was really saying, I excitedly announced “It’s time for Throwback Thursday!”

My students looked up at me a little confused and so I explained that I was going to set a timer and for the next 5 minutes we were going to share some of our class favorite days, activities, memories and stories from the year. Hands started shooting up all over the room and for the next 5 minutes we re-lived some of our greatest moments. There was energy in the room as we laughed and remembered together. It was just what we needed to break up our day.

The next Thursday a student asked, aren’t we going to do Throwback Thursday? When the class cheered I knew it would become a weekly or almost weekly class tradition.<

Stand Up Comedians

If you’ve spent much time in an upper grades classroom, you know how much kids LOVE to share and tell jokes! I encouraged my students to collect jokes, and when we had a few extra minutes, we’d have STAND UP time! It can take as little as 2 minutes out of your day, and students love, love, love it. File this under Brain Break ideas, too!

Fun Friday

Most Friday mornings, I would bring my class outside for a quick 10-15 minute game. You could always tie this into your classroom management system, but I rarely took this away because it was such a special time for us. There are so many easy games to play (Captain’s Coming is a favorite), and over time they get GIDDY with excitement when they arrive on Friday mornings.

Picture Board

I strongly suggest that you find a way that you’d like to document your year in pictures and reflections. My first year teaching, I did something called “Reel Reflections” and took pictures each month to print out. On the last day of the month, we would talk about ALL the things we did and learned that month, and I would type them out and hang them next to the pictures. It stayed up all year, and was so fun to see all of our learning! I wish I had a picture of it, because it was such a great display.

A few years ago, I put up an Instagram bulletin board that I would change out monthly with different pictures. Students absolutely loved this. I kept all the pictures from each month and gave them out at the end of the year. It was the best walk down memory lane at the end of the year and keep smiling faces on the walls all year! (Tip: I hung up pictures of my family at the beginning of the year so students could get to know me and my family.)

Time Capsule

Have you ever put together a time capsule at the beginning of the year to be opened on the last day of school? It’s pretty fun! I take a class picture, we all write down our hopes and dreams, and I print out some local news articles. It’s always amazing to look back and see how much changes in a year.

Make Your Own Traditions

Remember Throwback Thursday? You see that wasn’t an activity I had on the lesson plans and it wasn’t even on the schedule. In fact, it wasn’t even in my head until that very moment. I share that to encourage you that not all community-building activities have to be thought out. In fact, some of the best start with a spontaneous thing that happens in class. It might start with an inside joke that only your class gets or maybe it’s an activity or way of your learning that your class really enjoys. It could be anything as long as you make it yours!

Be intentional about building community in the classroom, but also be flexible. An activity that was loved in previous years might be a flop and new activities, like Throwback Thursday, might be born. Each class has its own personality that will come out in its own unique ways. Go with it, have fun with it, and watch your group of random people become a family.

Pin It and Come Back!

If you are anything like me you vaguely remember a classroom idea but have no idea where you saw it. I started pinning ideas that I wanted to use in my classroom on my Pinterest boards. Now I go to Pinterest and can quickly and easily get back to my favorite classroom ideas and activities. So, pin this now so you can come back later for more classroom community building ideas.

How Do You Build Community in the Classroom?

I’d love to know some of your favorite community-building traditions. Come join the discussion in my teaching Facebook group or on Instagram.

Incorporating the outdoors into your classroom can be a fun way for kids to learn, and this year it will prove to be especially important. Studies show that getting into nature has a calming effect on children, improves sensory skills, can increase attention spans, and gives children a sense of freedom. While we can’t be outdoors all the time, we can even bring the outdoors inside! Here are some tips and tricks to help get nature into your classroom!

Nature as Manipulatives

Depending on your student’s level, items from nature make perfect materials for hands-on learning! Leaves, flowers, and rocks make perfect ways to learn colors and shapes.  Older kids can use the manipulatives to make shapes with certain attributes… Students can go on a scavenger hunt around the playground looking for different colors or shapes that can be found in nature. Challenge the students with bingo cards that ask them to find certain items.

For older students, things from nature such as acorns and pinecones can be used to group when learning multiplication and division. These items can also be used on place value charts when learning regrouping for addition and subtraction.

For the activity below, I gave each child four equal groups task cards, and they had to use outdoor manipulatives to represent them.

Outdoor Classroom

Don’t underestimate the power of simply stepping outside. When possible, take your class outside for periods of time! Read-alouds and sustained silent reading are perfect opportunities to go outdoors and let the kids get some fresh air while still learning.  If it’s a nice day outside, I regularly take my students outside with their literature circle books and conduct reading groups outside.

Science- especially on days where messy experiments are scheduled- is also an opportune time to take the class outside. Be sure to take all the necessary materials and your accountability sheet, and you’re all set for outdoor learning! The Science Penguin has SO many amazing outdoor scavenger hunts and science activities that work with many different topics.

Plants and Animals

An easy way to bring nature into your classroom is to have an abundance of plants! Plants bring the outside indoors, add brightness to your room, and improve air quality. You can choose a mix of flowering plants and green plants, and talk about the differences in growth between the different types. These plants can also be used to learn measurement and how to create data charts. Taking care of the plants is something that can be easily added to your class job chart.  I always have a group of students who take great pride in caring for the classroom plants.

I was never able to personally pull it off, but a classroom pet is also a great way to bring the outdoors inside. Whether it’s a fish, turtle, or hamster, students can learn about the animal and its natural habitat. Discussions about what the animal eats, where in nature it is found, and what it’s predators are can take place at morning meeting time. Much like plants, taking care of the class pet can be a student job, which increases a sense of responsibility among students!

Weather Charts and Pictures

Part of bringing the outdoors inside is to learn about what’s happening outdoors! You don’t have to wait until your curriculum calls for you to track the weather… A daily weather discussion can be incorporated as part of a morning meeting or science. Younger students (and let’s be honest, older students, too) will enjoy observing the weather and discussing the temperature and any precipitation. Chart the moon phases, or keep a line graph of the high and low temperatures daily.  Older students can talk about wind speed, different types of clouds, and humidity. Another idea for a class job is the class naturalist, who reports on current weather conditions.

Putting up pictures of beautiful nature scenes can also bring the outdoors in. You might want to choose pictures of places that are far away, so that students can see pictures of nature other than what is outside their own window. Some ideas include Antarctica, the rainforest, or the desert. Be sure to include animals, as well! Many students enjoy animals and these pictures can become great discussion topics. After a while, encourage students to find their own outdoor inspiration pictures to bring in and discuss.

Classroom Library Selections

Be sure to have books about nature and animals available to the students! These books can be enjoyed during sustained silent reading, or after independent work is completed. Additionally, if you have a writing center, look for writing prompts about plants, animals, the weather, or natural landforms. These topics can be enjoyable for kids to write about! When I was student teaching, my cooperating teacher pulled pictures off of scenic calendars and used them as writing prompts. They were always a huge hit.

Outdoor Scavenger Hunts

Have your students go on a scavenger hunt! While this one isn’t really nature-oriented, it’s a great way to take advantage of a beautiful day. I love hanging up task cards on the outside windows at my school and having students complete them scavenger hunt style. They all start at a different number card and then move around finding the next one in the numerical sequence.

These girls are working on Task Cards taped on our outdoor windows.  In the reflection, you can see even more students working on them!

Walking Podcasts

Do you have access to devices at your school? Have a group of students listen to an educational podcast while they walk around the track or playground.

Team Building and Morning Meeting Activities

Every Friday during Morning Meeting, it was a goal of mine to get outside and play a quick ten-minute game. Captain’s Coming was ALWAYS a favorite and that quick shot of fresh air and activity did wonders for their attention spans!

Find Inspiration Everywhere Outdoors

There are SO many ways to incorporate the area surrounding your school into lessons. For example, when we are studying angles, I have students go outside and find examples of angle types in the playground equipment. If you’re working on graphs, haves students collect data on how long it takes them to do certain things and then graph it. If you’re working on area and perimeter, go outside to measure dimensions of the concrete slabs. The options are truly endless, and there is a way to adapt most lessons to make them outdoors-friendly!

How do you incorporate the outdoors into your classroom?

Morning Meeting. It isn’t just for the primary kids! I was lucky enough to get my very first job at a school that very much believed in the power of Morning Meeting. We were given the Morning Meeting Book from Responsive Classroom (which I HIGHLY recommend) and then were given autonomy to run our Morning Meetings in the way that best fit our classroom. To start, I followed the prescribed routines EXACTLY. Eventually, I was able to meld my Morning Meeting time into a precious tradition that fit my and my students’ needs.

Please Note:This post was written pre-COVID, so some adaptations will definitely need to be made to ensure social distancing. However, I still believe in the immense value of morning meeting, and I’d encourage it to happen as often as possible, even if it’s over ZOOM!

The Purpose of Morning Meeting

The foundation of learning is a trusting relationship with a caring and effective teacher, and the best learning environment is one that is emotionally safe for every student. Morning meeting goes a long way in achieving this goal.

When you start the day with a routine Morning Meeting, students can feel welcomed, relaxed, confident, and ready to learn. By spending time interacting with their diverse group of peers, truly listening to others and learning about others’ lives and perspectives, students’ ability to live together in the community and in society is strengthened every day.

The Basics of Morning Meeting

Morning Meeting is a 20-30 minute block of time reserved for team building in the classroom. Morning Meeting is not often academic in and of itself, but research suggests that its benefits can have an effect on academic performance throughout the school day. Morning Meeting, when completed as suggested, has four distinct parts that are supposed to be completed each day. Due to time constraints, grade levels, or other limitations, one or more of these components may be cut to accommodate class time.

1. Greeting: Each person in the classroom is greeted individually. This can be done in a variety of ways, depending on the amount of time the teacher has for Morning Meeting or the other meetings that are planned. Most often, students “turn to the left and turn to the right and greet each other, by name, with a handshake.” Other times greeting games are played to combine the greeting and the activity. Greeting is one part of Morning Meeting that I NEVER miss. Ever. Even if we only have time for a handshake.

2. Activity: Students participate in a team-building activity, play a game, or read a relevant book that can facilitate discussions. The activities are often not academic, though they can often be modified to practice academic skills or integrate with classroom topics. If there is something going on in the classroom or at the school that needs to be addressed, it is often addressed in place of the activity. Many discussions occur around this time!

3. Morning Message: A message is written on the board each morning, and students must read it and often respond to it. The message will include notes about the day, and its special events. Then students are asked to respond with one or two words to a short prompt, such as “what is your favorite color?” (Of course, they get much more creative than that as the school year goes on.) The results can be used to make a bar graph later, or to have other discussions. Some teachers use this as an editing prompt and pepper their morning messages with errors. I never did this, but it’s totally up to you.

4. Sharing: This is usually one of the highlights of Morning Meeting for most students. Yes! Even in the upper grades! Three to four students are allowed to “share” each day and other students can ask questions about what the student has shared. An important element is that the sharing does not have to be an item….it can be anything that is going on in the student’s life. In fact, no more than a quarter of all sharing is an actual item. Students sign up to share in advance, on a board posted in the Morning Meeting space.

Setting Expectations for Morning Meeting

The book goes into this quite deeply, but if you are wanting to get started with morning right away, here are a few expectations I set from DAY ONE so that morning meeting runs smoothly and is a respectful, collaborative time.

• Arriving at Morning Meeting: I always had some sort of signal to tell kids it was time to clean up their morning work and join us at morning meeting. This was something we would practice, practice, practice at the beginning of the year. The expectation was that when they heard the signal, they’d immediately put away their things and quietly find a spot in the Morning Meeting circle. This happened quickly and quietly so that no time was wasted. Morning Meeting is included in our transition tracker. At the beginning of the year, I have a student timekeeper time how long each transition takes…. They LOVE trying to beat their time, and I love saving all those precious minutes for instruction!

• Forming a Circle: This could really fall under arrival, but I think it’s important to mention. We had a “rule” that we did not sit next to the same people each day when getting into the circle formation for Morning Meeting and that NOBODY was left out of the circle. I let children choose their space within the Morning Meeting circle, but I reserved the right to move anyone at any time. It also takes a few weeks, but after a while, students really learn how to form the circle without me having to ask them to make space for everyone. Setting these expectations up front saves headaches later!
• Respecting Talk Time: This may be the most important one! During sharing time, we set that expectation that whoever “had the floor” TRULY had the floor. So often while sharing, another kiddo would raise their hand and say, “OH! That happened to me too…” and proceed to tell their story. Since we really want students to feel like they are being heard, we teach kids to do a “me too” single or “connection” single to acknowledge that they relate to what’s being said but to not take the spotlight off of other students. We always encouraged students to share their connections with the sharer during resource or during another time! Morning Meeting discussions provide GREAT conversation starters for later!

Adapting Morning Meeting to the Upper Grades

When I first started teaching, I taught third grade, and Morning Meeting was easy! Kids LOVED all the cutesy greetings, they still adored sharing, and any activity made them grin. Moving to fourth grade was a little bit different, and I found that I needed to change it up to really engage them and make it worth their time. Here are some of the ways I made each part of Morning Meeting work for me!

I always had a morning message on the board when students walked in, but it was never as detailed as a typical Morning Meeting message. It would usually say something along the lines of, “Good Morning! I am so excited to see your smiling faces today. Today, we will practice our math skills by playing detective, and we will watch an exciting video to demonstrate cause and effect. Let’s make it a great day!” Then, I would typically add a VERY brief prompt, like, “What is one thing you are proud of?” After they come in every morning, students would have the opportunity to respond to that prompt on the whiteboard or on a piece of anchor chart paper, depending on where I wrote it. I typically did not add editing tasks or anything like that to our morning message, but I did take mental notes of which students didn’t contribute to the board. If I saw that there was a student who hadn’t responded in a while, I would make it a point throughout the day to quietly and casually ask him/her their answer to the next day’s prompt. This is a GREAT time to discreetly learn a TON about your students!

I keep track of morning message ideas on THIS Pinterest board. There are so many great ideas here!

The silly, drawn-out greetings just couldn’t keep my 4th graders engaged. They ended up getting super silly, twirling around on the floor, and not everyone would get to participate or WANT to participate. So instead, we usually keep it fairly brief and engaging.

The only requirement for our greeting was that each and every student looked into someone’s eyes and greeted them by name every single day. Whoever they greeted then greeted them back. We usually included a fist bump, hand shake, or elbow tap as well. But even that one second of connection gave life to some children early each morning! Since I greet my students at the door each morning, this ensured that every single child was earnestly greeted at least three times every morning (me, the person they chose to greet, and the person who greeted them). They were welcomed into our class.

Some of our favorite upper grades greetings include:

• The Ball Toss: What kid doesn’t LOVE a koosh ball? This usually showed up at least once a week in our room because it was quick and easy but well-loved. Everyone in the circle would stand up, and I’d toss the ball to a student and greet them by name. They’d greet me back, then choose another person to greet and toss it to them. Once they’ve been greeted, they sit down.
• The Shoe Greeting: Each student throws one shoe into the circle. You go around the circle and each student chooses a shoe, finds the person wearing the match, and does a simple handshake greeting.
• Order Up: This is a play on the old “line up according to birthdays without talking.” All year long, students would brainstorm ways that we could order ourselves, alphabetical, by birthday, by age, etc. and we would make our circle in that format and do a simple handshake greeting around the circle.
• Snowball Fight: This one literally never got old. As part of the morning message, I would tell students to write their name on a piece of paper and bring it to the morning meeting. When they arrive, I would have them crumple it up and throw it in the center. Going around the circle, each person picks a snowball and greets that child.
• Commonly Uncommon: This is a play on the common “Just like me!” game that is described in the official Morning Meeting book. Going around the circle, each child would say one unique thing about themselves, like, “Good morning! I am Mrs. Montero, and I absolutely LOVE learning about the Titanic.” Any child that agreed with that statement would stand up and say, “Hey! Me too!” Then, they would great one another. If there were a TON of me toos, the person would just choose a few.

There are truly so many different greeting options, but in the upper grades we always tried to simplify things.

Morning Meeting activities totally run the gamut. Sometimes, they can parallel the counseling guidance activities or address conflict issues in the classroom. We often use this time to read books and discuss how they can apply to our current classroom situations. At the beginning of the year, we use this time to discuss our character trait of the week. By teaching social skills and peer interactions before situations arise, without any real conflict, students can role-play compassion, respect, and all positive attributes without any emotional load attached. This builds their confidence in themselves and each other and in the safety of the classroom environment, as the teacher’s expectations for how student will treat each other is completely clear, and that the teacher will take the time to be sure everyone is heard and understood. That being said, here were a few of the more common activities we did during Morning Meeting in the upper grades.

• Picture Books: At least once a week, I include a picture book reading and discussion in my morning meeting plans. Here is one example of how I used a picture book at the beginning of the year. We read the book The Day You Begin (so good). Then the kids wrote down (anonymously) things that made them unique. We posted the sticky notes and read them aloud. The next day, if there were kids that had something in common, we placed a heart next to the sticky note to show some commonalities. This is just ONE example, but the options are truly endless with picture book.

• Drama Circles: I LOVE Drama Circles from Runde’s Room, and so did my students. We did one for just about every holiday and any other time I could fit them in. I can’t recommend these enough!
• Think It Through: This is a routine that I’ve talked about pretty extensively on the blog, and one that I will FOREVER be passionate about including. We typically do our morning work before morning meeting, and Think it Through is always at least one morning’s morning work, and then students also use it as an early finisher option. On Fridays, discussing that week’s content is our activity. I LOVE hearing what students think about their quotes, and the week’s activities always end up causing quite the discussion!

• Would You Rather: There are SO many options for free Would You Rather questions, and kids always eat them up! We would all stand in a line and then have one side of the room be one option and one side be the other. Sometimes I would let them engage in a little debate about it, too.
• Critical Thinking Moments: ANY of the ideas from my “Increasing Critical Thinking in Your Spare Time” blog post can be used as Morning Meeting activities. Many of them come straight from our Morning Meeting routines!

In the lower grades, we had a sharing sign up board for sharing time during Morning Meeting. This usually encouraged kids to bring something and turn it into more of a show and tell time. It always broke my heart when a kiddo REALLY wanted to share something on a particular day, but they weren’t signed up for the day. So, I did away with signing up, and I limit us to about 5 minutes of sharing depending on how long our activity was. Sometimes, 15 kids get to share, and sometimes 5 kids get to share. I tell the students that if there is something *particularly* important that they want to share during morning meeting to let me know ahead of time so that I can be sure to call on them. Most often in the upper grades, kids aren’t bringing toys to share, but they are just verbally sharing something important to them, which is so important.

Another huge component of sharing is question time. I mentioned above how important it is for students to not monopolize another child’s sharing time. That’s where questions come in handy! After a student shares, they can choose one or two students to ask questions (NOT make connections) about their share.

Wrapping Up

For me, the goal was always that Morning Meetings could eventually be run almost completely by the students. Ideally, a student is chosen to be the leader of morning meeting, and they decide, from a list provided by the teacher, on the day’s greeting and activity. This is a high honor, even in the upper grades.

Do you want even more ideas for classroom traditions that build community? Check out THIS post!

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Back to School 2020 is sure to be one for the history books. Desks 6 feet apart, plexiglass dividers, classes split into 2 rotations, in-person and online classes. What is a teacher to do when it comes to building a family in a classroom unlike any they’ve been in before?

Like most things this year, many of our favorite classroom icebreakers and team building activities won’t work because they won’t be social distancing friendly. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

Here are 10 social distancing and virtual classroom-friendly activities that will help you and your students get to know each other and set the foundations of a class family.

Ice Breakers for Social Distancing or the Virtual Classroom

1. Hello, My Name Is . . .

This is a fun game to play with your students in order to help them learn the names and some fun facts about their classmates. The idea is to use this game every day for 3 – 5 days in a row or play 3 – 5 rounds on one day. All you need are some “Hello, My Name Is . . .” name tags.

Each round will build on the last round using a different theme or question.

Round 1: Your Name

Have students write their name at the bottom of the white box on the name tag. They will need space to add other words in the white space in front of their name.

Round 2: Your favorite food

Have students write the name of their favorite food right above their name.

Round 3: Your favorite color

Have students add their favorite color on the name tag right before their favorite food.

Round 4: Your favorite hobby / activity

Have students add a favorite hobby or activity right before the color.

Round 5: Add an adjective that starts with the same letter as their name

Have students write an adjective that starts with the same letter of their name before the hobby.

To play, take turns going around the room introducing yourself according to the theme or question for that round. Each introduction should start with the words “Hello, my name is . . .” After each introduction, the class responds with “Hi ________!” repeating what the student said.

Here’s a Round 1 example:

Student 1: Hello, my name is Mary.
Class: Hi, Mary.
Student 2: Hello, my name is Jonathan.
Class: Hi, Jonathan.

For Round 2 each person will add their favorite food before their name. It might sound like this:

Student 1: Hello, my name is sushi Mary.
Class: Hi, sushi Mary.
Student 2: Hello, my name is taco Jonathan.
Class: Hi, taco Jonathan.

For Round 3 each person will add their favorite color to their name like this:

Student 1: Hello, my name is green sushi Mary.
Class: Hi, green sushi Mary.
Student 2: Hello, my name is blue taco Jonathan.
Class: Hi, blue taco Jonathan.

For Round 4 it’s time to add a hobby to the mix.

Student 1: Hello, my name is singing green sushi Mary.
Class: Hi, singing green sushi Mary.
Student 2: Hello, my name is reading blue taco Jonathan.
Class: Hi, reading blue taco Jonathan.

For Round 5 each person will add an adjective that starts with the same letter as their name.

Student 1: Hello, my name is marvelous singing green sushi Mary.
Class: Hi, marvelous singing green sushi Mary.
Student 2: Hello, my name is jovial reading blue taco Jonathan.
Class: Hi, jovial reading blue taco Jonathan.

You can make this game last as many rounds as you want by simply adding or taking off themes or questions. However, it is the repetitive nature of the game, and the silly answers, that help students remember each other’s name and facts.

2. Two Truths and a Lie

This is a fun, classic game that allows students to share some little known facts about themselves while trying to stump their classmates too. Each student will write down two true statements and one lie about themselves. Let them know that they can put these statements in any order as the goal is for the class to try to figure out which one is the lie. Although this can be done without writing it down, I have found that with elementary-aged students it is very beneficial to give students thinking time first. Otherwise, you end up with students who try to think when it is their turn and it makes the truths and lie very obvious.

After everyone is done writing down their sentences, then go around the room having students read their 3 statements. The class will then vote on which they think is the lie. After the vote, the student will reveal the lie and can explain the truths if there is time.

This game could also be spread apart over many days. After students write down their three statements, have them turn in their papers. Then as time is available, the teacher will choose a paper, have the student stand, and then the teacher will read the 3 statements. The class votes on which they think is the lie. After the vote, the student reveals the real lie and can explain the truths.

3. Playdough Power

For this activity, each student will need their own small container of play dough. Since students are most likely not able to share supplies, they can keep this in their desk or with their supplies to use again and again.

This is one of my absolute favorite first day of school activities. I love to have it on the students’ desks ready for them to start when they first arrive. Having an activity that they jump right into that doesn’t require them knowing anyone is a great way to ease the first day jitters.

Have students build something out of playdough that represents them or shares something about them. Here’s some examples:

● Build your favorite animal
● Build your favorite food
● Build something that shows your hobby or something you like to do
● If you were an animal, what animal would you be? Build it.
● Build something that represents your favorite TV show.
● Build something that shows what you did over the summer.
● Build what you ate for breakfast.

After students build, then have a share time where students show what they built and tell how it relates to them. This activity could easily be repeated every morning during the first week of school, or longer, using a different build prompt each time.

4. Would You Rather

Get to know your students, their likes, dislikes, personalities and more with a game of Would You Rather. Grab some Would You Rather questions from the internet and you are ready to begin. All you have to do is ask students the question and then give them a way to respond. For social distancing choose actions they can easily complete at their desk space like stand or sit. This makes for a great movement break to use throughout the first few days of school, too!

Let the students know that you are going to ask them to choose between two options. It’s okay if they like both or don’t like either, their job is to make a choice between the two. Let them know that if they like the first option best, they will stand up.  If they like the second option best, they sit in their seat.

Then ask the Would You Rather question and give the students time to respond with your chosen signals.  After each question, call on 2-3 students with each answer and have them explain why they chose their answer.

5. Quiz Time

Make your first pop quiz of the year about the class. Keep notes of the things you learn about your students during your ice breakers and get-to-know-you activities. Then at the end of the first week, create a pop quiz asking questions about what you learned. Your students will love being the stars of the questions!

You can make it a paper and pencil quiz or use an app like Kahoot or Google Forms to make a digital pop quiz. This is a great way to introduce a new type of digital activity that you will use during the year too! 

Getting to Know You Activities for Remote Learning:

Are you looking for a fun and engaging way for students to learn about each other? I have made my Getting to Know You back to School Task Cards DIGITAL! But these aren’t just task cards… They now include a to-slide Google Slides activity so students can put together an ebook all about them! It is possibly one of my favorite creations. If you still want to go the traditional task card route but don’t want to play SCOOT, I have also provided Google Slides versions of each of the cards so that you can project them at the front of the class.

Social Distancing or Virtual Team Building Activities

6. Secret Handshake

Build a sense of classroom community with a class secret “handshake.” Tell the class that you are going to create a secret handshake or motion that you can use with each other during the year.  Let the class brainstorm some motions and then put together a simple secret handshake.

Some possible motions include:

● Air High 5’s
● Air First Bumps
● Air Hand Shakes
● Touching a body part like the shoulder, nose or head
● Wiggling or Moving a body part
● Turning Around

Try to develop a series that is about 5 movements or 5 seconds long. After you decide on the class secret handshake, then practice it a few times. Continue to practice it multiple times a day so that students can learn it quickly. Then use it as you say good morning, when you pick the class up from lunch or before you say goodbye for the day.

7. 20 Questions

Play a game of 20 questions (or use the number that is the same as the number of students you have so that each person can ask 1 question). Choose 1 person to pick a secret word (nouns usually work best) and have them write it down or tell the teacher. Then challenge the class to work together to figure out what the person is. This will require students to listen to each other’s questions, the answers and thinking about related follow-up questions that might help to narrow down the secret word.

After everyone has asked a question, then let each student take one guess.

8. Race to 100

This is a fun game that takes teamwork, cooperation and listening skills. Challenge the class to count to 100 as quickly as possible without two people talking at the same time. Once the game begins, they are only allowed to say the numbers from 1 to 100. If two people talk at the same time they must start over with 1. If the numbers are repeated or said out of order, the counting must start again at 1. It adds an element of competition if you time them or if you set a time limit.

This game works really well as a discussion starter for teamwork. After playing a couple of times, stop and talk about the difficulties and what could make it more successful. Then give the students 1-2 minutes of planning time allowing only one person to talk at a time during the planning time too.

After planning, let the class try the Race to 100 again. Then talk about how this attempt was the same or different from the other attempts. If it was more successful, have the class discuss the reasons why. Hopefully, these reasons lead back to planning and teamwork!

9. 5 Word Story

You are going to tell a story as a class. The catch, each student may only say 5 words at a time. Before you begin, make sure that everyone knows the speaking order so that you don’t have to stop your story to figure out whose turn it is.

If you have space for students to spread out and sit in a circle around the room, this is probably the easiest option. If students are at their desks, make sure that everyone knows who they speak after.  You can also list the names of the students on the board and use that order. Just have a plan and make sure everyone knows it.

Then start the story. As you say the first 5 words of the story, hold up your hand and raise one finger for each word. Then look at the student who is next so they can continue the story. It might sound like this:

Teacher: Once upon a time a
Student 1: dog was running in a
Student 2: park. The dog was brown
Student 3: and white with a black
Student 4: spot over his left eye.
Student 5: A giant green and yellow
Student 6: lizard was chasing the dog
Student 7: through the park as it
Student 8: ran and looked around for

You can finish the story as a class or let it be the start of writing prompt. After everyone has a chance to add 5 words, challenge the students to finish the story in their writing journals.

10. All Linked Up

So have you ever heard of the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”? You know, that game where you can connect any actor or actress with Kevin Bacon with 6 or less connections. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, take a sec and Google it. And, if you have no idea who Kevin Bacon is, well, just forget you read this paragraph and keep reading because Kevin Bacon really has nothing to do with this entire blog post, but I digress.

The idea of All Linked Up is to see if you can connect everyone in your class through common names, interests or activities.  To do this, students will need to know things about each other, so this one might be best played at the end of the week or during the second or third week of school.

To start out, make the connections anything that the students have in common. It might be something like this:

Mary is connected to Mike, Margaret and Matthew because all of their names all start with M. Matthew is connected to Sarah because they both have 2 brothers. Sarah is connected to Kim, Jennifer and Lola because they all like the color pink. Lola is connected to Jonathan because they both like to read. And so on . . .

Once you can connect the whole class in a few different ways, you might try limiting the connections to one or two commonalities like favorite foods or members of the family. Or challenge the class to see if they can connect everyone in 10 or less links.

There’s something about knowing that you are in some way connected with your entire class that helps you feel like you are part of something bigger than yourself. You could also build a paper chain as a representation of these connections and keep it hanging in the classroom.