Morning Meeting and a Tally Freebie!

One thing I don't think I could teach without is morning meeting!  I have used it when I taught in K and now in First and believe it really starts off the day in a positive way.  One thing I have been more focused on this year is character education and virtues!  I teach at a Catholic school so it is easily tied to our religion as well! WIN-WIN!  Each month we have a chapter from our sticky situations book that focuses on one specific virtue; kindness, compassion, friendliness, responsibility, contentment etc!  To go along with each chapter there are daily stories with situations about children that my students can relate to.  We not only read the daily story but review the month's topic as well.  Each story ties into scripture from the Bible as well, but this can be skipped over if you teach at a non-parochial school.  It is truly an amazing book!

MORNING MEETING

Another essential piece to our mornings is our message!  Again, something I have used in both K and 1st and love for both grades.  It is so easy to introduce, review, and incorporate almost any skill and topic.  I always include the date and what our special is for the day as well as a question.  I increase the message in difficulty by moving from easier and more obvious errors to harder ones.  I also begin the year writing each sentence a different color and then go to all one color.  I include a variety of fill-ins and mistakes to go along with the skills we are working on.  I have students volunteer to edit the message and then our student of the day or teacher's helper will read the message and the class repeats the message!  You can see some examples of the recent messages we have had.

Working on identifying the sounds of y at the end of words and verbs!

Working on vowel digraph ee, r-controlled combination er, and reviewing those ending y sounds!

Working on linking verbs, and reviewing tricky y sounds, and ck!

Working on writing months and r-controlled combinations!

Working on sight words, digraphs, and endings!

Just for sticking around here is another fun activity we did this week to introduce tally marks! Just click on the picture to get a FREE EDITABLE VERSION!