6 Fun and Engaging Class Meeting Ideas

Kirsten 0:11

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the social studies teacher podcast. This is a rare occasion. I'm currently recording a batch of episodes during the day in the middle of the day. Normally, I record my podcast episodes after all three of my kids go to bed. But this week, they are at a summer preschool camp. And so I have the morning to myself. So it's really exciting. But for now, let's go ahead and talk about today's topic, we are going to be thinking about fun and engaging class meeting ideas that you can implement. So in this episode, we're going to talk about what a class meeting is and the components of a class meeting. And thinking about some low prep class meeting ideas that I'll give you those six ideas. So that is where this episode is headed.

Kirsten 1:44

This is also called a morning meeting. So class meeting, morning meeting, same deal. This is really an integral part of a happy and healthy classroom, it's a great way to build community, it is just that time of day where everybody can sit together and learn about each other and learn from each other. When I've implemented morning meetings or class meetings, normally, they were the first thing of the day before we started in our content. But you could also implement class meetings, really, at any time, it could be at the very end, I have worked with others who have done kind of community circle type of thing at the very end, recapping their day, you can do it whenever you have some, like maybe 15 to 20 minutes of time, you're not sure what to do with, you could always plop it in there.

Kirsten 2:31

So let's just go and talk about what a class meeting is. A class meeting is a fun and engaging way to start the day and set students up for success could also be a great way to end the day and have students excited for the next day when you come and meet again. And what you're doing with those students in the class meeting is you're at a spot in the classroom for 10 to 20 minutes, and you're interacting with one another. And of course, this could be in a actual circle like the true community circle might be. Or it could be you have a rug area or carpet area and all the students sit on a carpet not necessarily in a circle, or it can be at your desks during COVID. We did have to you know sit at our desk, we didn't really good to do community circle or like sit on the carpet like I normally do. So our class meeting was at their desks. But I do love that at the very last day of school that school year, we got to meet on the carpet for one last class meeting. So that was kind of really nice.

Kirsten 3:33

So we're going to talk about the four components or just a variety of components that are common. The first one is the greet time, the students and teacher greet each other by name in a variety of ways. So that's the first part. Sharing time is another component where students are sharing events that are happening in their lives and are asked questions or comments by their peers, and the teacher. This was for me the longest part of class meaning but it was also the most fun and definitely the one we did very consistently every day because I had a kind of like a roster of everybody in the class and their sharing day. So usually I'd have three to five students share each day. So it was always the same group of students. And if a student was absent during their sharing day, then they would just share the following week. So that was just one of the easier ways to keep things pretty consistent. And students knew when to anticipate when to share. There are some talkers and who people who love to share, which is awesome. But if we just kind of said, Hey, anybody want to share, I'm sure there will be plenty of people who would be sharing very, very frequently and not as many people wanting to share at other times. So that is just one thing to note. The third component I'm going to talk about is an activity. There's a different component where everybody's participating in a short and fun team building activity that you can implement and facilitate. And then another component, the teacher message, students are reading or listening to a short message or series of announcements by the teacher. This is a great plugin to be like today, instead of PE, we're going to art. Just a reminder, there's an assembly today, so we have to leave at 930. Those are always those great ways to put in those teacher messages if there's any just specific announcements that they need to know.

Kirsten 5:30

So I am going to share with you six low prep class meeting ideas that you can utilize. The first idea is to use a slideshow, you can create a PowerPoint slideshow with fun activities for your greetings activities and the message such as a funny face greeting, like go up to five people and make a funny face and say hello, or a high five greeting. You could even do languages saying good morning in Spanish buenos dias, you can always have a fun slideshow with all the prompts you need for the day. A really great resource that I will make sure to link is a class meeting slide by teaching little leaders, this was a really great slideshow that I personally have utilized. It has a ton of activities you can use for the whole year. There's different themed Good morning procedure slides, the greeting, share time, message, goal setting. So there's all kinds of different prompts. So you don't have to think of those prompts yourself, because I know it could be a lot of work to do.

Kirsten 6:41

The other thing I wanted to share another idea is the question of the day. This is one of my favorite besides the let share part. The question of the day is where you make about you know, you have a question about an interesting topic such as if you can only eat one food item for a year, what would it be? It's a great way to spark a lot of dialogue and some funny answers. And if you're not the best at coming up with a variety of questions to ask, I recommend and have used the morning meeting discussion cards by Hello, fifth. So I will also make sure to link that. So this was it was had a lot of great themed questions like what subjects could you teach in school if you were a teacher, and then another one, what school supply is the least useful? So there were many questions, depending on the time of the year, you could also use AI like Chat GPT, generate 50 questions related to back to school for class meetings for grades three through five. So that can be one really great way to generate some questions, if you're having trouble coming up with some question ideas.

Kirsten 7:50

The third tip I have for you is to spread out if needed. Maybe there's a lot of sick people and maybe you know, every if you've don't feel comfortable getting in close contact, and you're maybe you don't have a carpet in general, what you could do is just stand in a circle around the entire room. That is one really great way to kind of get also to get students on their feet. And just like, you know, getting the wiggles out if needed. So you can conduct a class meeting, kind of like standing around the room in a circle, that could be a great suggestion.

Kirsten 8:31

And then the fourth idea I have is to host a scavenger hunt. So this is one of probably the different activities you could do. So kind of like activity time. This is a great team building activity, you can conduct a scavenger hunt where students have one minute to find an item such as something round, something red from around the classroom, and students are holding up their item and sharing or discussing the item they chose. So just making sure people are not running in the classroom and you know, maybe something that makes them happy in the classroom in general. And they have one minute to find that item.

Kirsten 9:11

The fifth idea is to host a Kahoot game. So this was always a student favorite as far as activity time. We hosted Kahoot games in our classroom, we did it twice a week. And students always looked forward to the quizzes. So students would be using their devices if they have Chromebooks or some type of tablet. And you could also just do it as a whole group where you just projected on the screen. But I think for best results, everybody should have their own device to complete the task. Kahoot is super user friendly. It's really easy to implement. All students are really doing is just selecting the different colors red, blue, green, and yellow. They're selecting that answer based on what the question is. You can really do a Kahoot game on any topic like something fun like you know, name that cartoon or name that flag. Have students suggest topics or you can select the topics but be sure to preview the quizzes in advance. This can be easily used and implemented in a short amount of time, especially if you have those questions really short like 10 to 15 questions.

The sixth class meeting idea I have for you is to spotlight a student each week. So have a student of the week, rotate through your class and designate a student to be the star of the week or student of the week. On their special day, students select a song to be played as students are entering the classroom. And students go around and share why that student is special and what they like about them. The letters from fourth grade star student compliment book is a great resource to implement with your students. This was something I've also used, and I believe there are digital and printable versions. This is just a really great way to build a community students love it. And it's just you know, all they're doing is writing something that they love about that person and drawing a picture or adding a picture. So just making sure you're spreading it out throughout the year and make sure you're not just doing it for three weeks, and then you stop. It's an all or none type of thing because I know if you have everybody in your homeroom and some people are doing the student of the week and not everybody, it does kind of start with hurt feelings. So make sure if you do the student of the week, you spotlight everybody and you can rotate I used to do alphabetically by first name, you could do alphabetically by last name, you can just kind of pick and choose so nobody knows what who to expect. But just making sure that you highlight everybody throughout the year.

Using morning meeting every day can be an important tool in building social emotional learning skills. And even though it's only a short time each day, it can make a lasting impact at how students interact with others. If you want more tips on class meetings, parent communications and so much more. I do have a free classroom community podcast series called The essential classroom community completely free, all you have to do is sign up and you'll be able to access the platform where the podcast series is hosted. So if you want to go there and sign up, you can go to the southern teach.com forward slash podcast series, or you can click on the link in the show notes. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day and I will talk to you again next week.