Morning Circle Time Activities
The school year is heading over to us quicker than anyone would likely want to admit. If you are anything like me though, the school year brings in some excitement and the idea of a fresh start and beginning!
Last week’s blog (linked here) discussed how to incorporate a morning entry routine that helps students set up for success. The morning entry routine really helps set up the scene for the rest of the school day. Following the morning entry routine in special education, comes the morning meeting- or the first sort of intentional social/academic moments within a students school days.
The first thing that is KEY when thinking about your classroom morning routine would for it to be super SIMPLE!! Don’t go crazy with this and try to cram in a lot in a short period of time. Take time to go through a few topics that you want to cover each and every day. Also, plan for things to take a lot longer than you think!
2nd: The next thing that is key to include in your circle time meeting is to incorporate movement. My students LOVE go noodle and other brain breaks and dance break videos. You could find a plethora of these on youtube. I have a youtube playlist going for my class, that I switch up each year based on student interests. Each year students change and so do interests, which is why I switch up the playlists based on that.
3rd: The final thing that should be included and noted in any morning meeting or circle time meeting would include student interests. If your students can’t connect to what you are teaching, then theres really no point in teaching it (or teaching it the way “it has always been done”). If our students are not connected to learning, I would argue that they aren’t truly learning. This may seem like it’s a lot of work for us educators to switch up year to year, but when you have the foundations and core of what you want to teach, switching up the actual content with student interest really would make a world of difference. Think about us adults, if we are interested in a subject- then we are more likely to really absorb the information and learn it rather than if we were not interested in the subject.
