Friends~I miss morning meetings! I have been teaching 2nd grade for 8 years now and I truly miss the morning meeting time that I had with my students when I taught kindergarten and first grade. With the busy schedule that is my life in 2nd grade, I feel like our mornings are rushed. I am going to try to take back our mornings and spend some time focusing on setting goals, sharing, and asking questions. I just got this book in the mail and I am loving what I am reading. I never thought that morning meetings could help with higher level thinking. I just looked at them as a way to create a classroom community. I am hoping that the sharing, listening, predicting and question asking in our morning meetings will really spark some great thinking and conversation. Click the book to check it out! I know that this is going to take some work. I am forever trying to get my students to just listen to each other and have real life conversations. We even practice this skill with Discussion Towers. They really help students practice the back and forth in a conversation. I came across this great blog post about Turning and Talking! Another area my kiddos struggle in. Check out this awesome poster/anchor chart that Mrs. Rios uses with her kiddos. I love how her poster gives clear guidelines for the students to follow when they TURN and TALK. I like her questions stems too. Here is another great post I found from Edutopica. You will love the 5 simple steps to getting your morning meetings up and running. This site then lead me to this awesome video by Mrs. Noonan! It is so incredible to see this happening in a 5th grade class. I am pretty sure I am going to need a bean bag tomorrow morning! So darn excited to surprise my kiddos with a morning meeting tomorrow. I will keep you posted! Check out my Morning Meeting Manuel below!