Morning Meeting (1-100)

First off, let me start by saying how much I have enjoyed reading this book so far! I was so excited to actually have a copy of this book and to be able to use it because Morning Meeting is an essential part of Pre-K. It not only gives children the opportunity to see value and importance in all of their classmates, but it also really helps students to develop their socioemotional skills.

The author does a great job so far with providing little anecdotal stories throughout the chapters because it really helps you to visualize how this could actually play out in a classroom. I also like the fact that the purpose of each topic is discussed so that the teacher can understand why it is so essential. Including possible questions that may arise for teachers reading the book and providing the answers to each question was extremely helpful especially for somebody like me. However, the true treasure of the book (and yes this is me peeking way ahead) is the appendix provided at the back of the book that gives you boundless resources.

Now I am going to provide some key quotes that really stuck out to me in the book:

Research indicates that educators who establish firm boundaries, foster warm personal relationships in the classroom, and enable students to have an impact on their environment strengthen students' attachment to their school, their positive behaviors. (Elias et al. 1997, 44)

This was one of the first quotes that I definitely wanted to take note of mainly because when I started in my classroom I had to get acquainted with my students and I knew the best way for me to do that was to immediately attempt to form relationships with them. I knew that that a way to do this was through Morning Meeting. It was just really comforting to know that research has been done to prove that by establishing the positive relationships with students it benefits them in more ways than one.

Meetings are rich with opportunities for students to assume responsibility and actively participate. (Kriete, 1999, p. 23)

This quote stood out to me because it was accompanied by a photo of two students up writing on the Morning Message. Reading this quote and looking at the picture just made me think about how the meeting is really less about me and more about students. They should be able to run the entire meeting while the teacher is just there as a facilitator. However, I know that for my kids they would need a lot of modeling and opportunities to practice before they could virtually run the morning meeting with less guidance from me. But, it is a great thought to have in mind for the beginning of the year because you have more time to really teach students how to take ownership of Morning Meeting.

Most teachers find it helpful to have a sign-up system which ensures that each child is a sharer at least once a week. Children sign up to share the day before Meeting or that same morning. Another way is to assign each child a regular day for sharing. (Kriete, 1999, p. 61)

I was sooooo happy to read this!! I have been having a huge issue in my class with children not being able to understand that not everyone will get a chance to share all at once and that we all have to take turns to share. Also, it helped me to consider the children who never get a chance to share at all. I think a sharing sign-up sheet is totally doable for my students. However, I think that the first couple of implementations of this would definitely consist of me assigning children to share for that day. I also do think it could work with students signing up for a day once they understand the method of how signing up works and the guidelines that go with it. I think this idea could be really beneficial for some of my more chatty students and it would also give them a reason behind why they have to take turns sharing.

Younger children tend to blurt out what they need to say when they need to say it. With the help of their teacher, however, they are very able to recognize that some news is serious and demands a different kind of response than other, lighter news.

This quote was very relevant to my classroom setting because my students always tend to blurt out things when students are in mid-sentence of presenting. I have found this to be something very difficult for me to get around during Circle Time. Lately I've been trying to give some students something else related to the topic to discuss while I am talking to the rest of the students about the topic. It seems to have been working in terms of blurting out but I'm not sure if it's really effective in terms of them paying attention. However, I am glad the book touched on this a little. I just wish they would've suggested more resources about how to teach young children to begin to take turns in conversations.

All in all, I have really enjoyed reading the first couple of pages of Morning Meeting and like I stated earlier, I am extremely excited to have the book! The information that I have been discovering from it has been priceless and I cannot wait to see what other considerations are present when thinking about how to facilitate  one of the most important parts of the day.

 

 

February Theory in Practice Connections

February has definitely been such an eye opener for me! I've learned so much about myself and my kids in this short but sweet month (the snow days didn't help much with shortening the month even more lol) All in all, I must say this was a big month for WRITING! I want my students to engage more with pleasure writing so I allowed for them for them to have ample opportunities to write whenever they want and for whatever reason. I really wanted my students to have journals so that I could make free writing easily accessible for them, however, of course my school doesn't have the funds to provide for such a resource (yes this is sarcasm) But despite that, I had to get creative so I made notebooks for my kids using construction paper and by placing writing tablet paper on the inside. I also put my students' names and pictures on the front of them to add its own personalized flare. Students have started off by recording things they learned about in the stories we had been reading:

These writing engagements have been really remarkable to watch and are perfect ways to assess students to see for one, if they were actually interested in the story (because they want to write about it) and for two, whether or not they understood the objective that was at hand.

The Strategies that Work text has been working wonders for me so far and I'm so excited to try out and fail, succeed, and experiment with many more strategies. The ones that were really fun was my first attempts with the List/Group/Label strategy and also the Turn & Talks. At first my kids were really confused as to how to turn and talk to their neighbors but now they seem to really like it and it gives them an opportunity to get those talkative jitters out. 

This month we really talked a lot about Famous African Americans which I thought may have been a difficult concept for my students to grasp but they were so interested and engaged. They didn't know that they, too, could grow up to invent something or be famous for an awesome reason. My goal in the future is to not only talk to them about Famous African Americans during February, but make it an ongoing discussion throughout the year. 

I noticed that a lot of my lows this month were  in mathematical instruction. I'm really excited about diving deep in the Van de Walle text and finding more innovative ways to really effective instruct my students and create an excitement about math for them. 

I also really benefited from reading Conscious Discipline this month and addressing my idea of Positive Intent and what Choices mean in my classroom. In reading these chapters, I found out about a lot of great new ideas that I plan to really try to implement in my classroom to make it a better place for both my students and myself. I'm nervous about entering March mainly because I feel like it's grind time and it's so many things I still haven't covered yet that they need to know before they go to Kindergarten. I feel so much pressure on myself especially for some of my students who are still falling behind a little bit. However, I plan to make the best of this month and learn all I can about my students and ask them about the personal goals that they have for themselves and what they want to learn and try my best to meet those needs so if I am not able to do as much as I wanted to, above all else, I was able to do something that matters to my kids! :-)