Developing Positive Social Skills In All Students
This year at Prairie Trail School, all homeroom classes will be using 20-25 minutes each day to hold a Morning Meeting. During this time, students will get the opportunity to gather together, share information from their own lives, work together in an activity or discussion, and read a daily message from the teacher.
Why? Now more than ever, students need explicit instruction on how to interact appropriately with peers. This rings even more true with the prevalence of technology and fewer opportunities for appropriate, face-to-face conversations and interactions with others. Morning Meetings will allow our students the chance to gain positive social skills in a structured environment, helping them develop a repertoire of appropriate responses to different types of news and information shared by others with direct modeling and feedback from the teacher.
Why? Now more than ever, students need explicit instruction on how to interact appropriately with peers. This rings even more true with the prevalence of technology and fewer opportunities for appropriate, face-to-face conversations and interactions with others. Morning Meetings will allow our students the chance to gain positive social skills in a structured environment, helping them develop a repertoire of appropriate responses to different types of news and information shared by others with direct modeling and feedback from the teacher.
Goals and Objectives
The purpose of this time is to give ALL classrooms the opportunity to further develop and work on appropriate social-emotional and academic skills that can be practiced specifically and then carried out through the rest of the day.
Holding Morning Meetings every day provides consistent opportunities for all students to build community in the classroom, gain a sense of belonging, build trust, and set a positive tone for learning. Morning Meetings will allow social and academic learning to come together in a way that is both productive and fun.
Holding Morning Meetings every day provides consistent opportunities for all students to build community in the classroom, gain a sense of belonging, build trust, and set a positive tone for learning. Morning Meetings will allow social and academic learning to come together in a way that is both productive and fun.
Morning Meetings and P.B.I.S.
At the beginning of the year, your Morning Meeting time will be a daily opportunity to use Cool Tools with your students and have discussions, activities, and messages about PBIS topics. This will help promote more consistency from classroom to classroom and grade level to grade level. As the year goes on, PBIS topics may be designated to one or two Morning Meetings sessions a week. By that time, the topics of Morning Meetings on the other days of the week will be up to the teacher and the needs of the individual classroom.
Creative Opportunity or Specific Script?
This is not just a program we will drop into the middle of your day. It will be relevant, useful, and coincide with what you teach in your classroom. While there is a certain structure to Morning Meetings that all classrooms will implement, you will still have the autonomy to use your creativity and judgment for what best fits your classroom needs.
Information on this website comes from:
Kriete, Roxann, and Lynn Bechtel. The Morning Meeting Book. Northeast Fndtn for Children, 2002. Print.