Morning Meeting Magic

I actually look forward to Mondays.  Sort of amazing, but I do.  I enjoy my Monday Morning Meeting that much.  As I enjoy alliteration...but anyway.  We start off our meeting with this great YouTube clip from Sesame Street.




Never mind that I loooooove this song.  The kids love it even more!  I was afraid at first to play it, because I thought they wouldn't like that it was from Sesame Street.  So I actually slipped it in about three weeks into the school year by telling them that I had a favorite song I wanted to show them but I was afraid they'd make fun of me.  They absolutely promised and crossed their hearts and pinky swore that they wouldn't.  So I played it.  And one of my tough kids yelled out all of a sudden "Hey! My old teacher used to play this!"  And he got up and started dancing.   So then everybody did.  And we haven't looked back.  We play it at least once everyday- and they ask for it as a reward as well.

They sing along and do the dance moves.  It makes me happy.  And it puts us in a very positive frame of mind as we begin our day.

I keep my class meetings in a flip chart for my Promethean Board. I have to keep them in a binder as well for the Administration, so I just print it out after we're done.  I like it in the flip chart because we can easily look back at the week before, and see if we have to revisit anything. 

For the past two weeks, my kids have been talking about a problem they have pushing and shoving when they get in line.  This is a problem they came up with, and not one that I mentioned at all.  I can't say that I'd even thought about it.  I had kind of thought it was just sort of natural.  But they brought it up, and actually wanted to spend meeting time workshopping the issue.  So the first week they decided to try  three different "tools" they'd learned in guidance lessons to solve the problem.  They picked ignore, don't sweat the small stuff, and stop and think.  I did not interfere with the decision.  Yeah, I could see how the first two tools were not going to fix the line problem, but what good is it if I tell them?

So we went through the week, and the pushing and shoving problem did not go away.  When we met again last Monday, I asked - is it fixed?  And they said NO.  Did your tools help?  And guess what, without me telling them, they said the first two were no good.  And then one of the boys said, the last one should have worked.  And after they talked a bit, they decided the problem was what to do when they stopped and thought.  So, another meeting spent workshopping the line issue.  But, I have to say, it went better this week because we had something specific to practice.

And another great thing about having it on the board is that I can bring it up whenever we do have to line up so they can look it over for themselves.

Sadly, I am missing my Monday Meeting because of Hurricane Sandy.  Stay safe everybody.