Kiddos need a structured routine to start their instructional day, and there’s no better way to begin the day than with Morning Meeting by Responsive Classroom. Morning Meeting includes four components: greeting, sharing, group activity, and morning message. Earlier this year, I came across a wonderful book called Doing Math in Morning Meeting. It’s a treasure trove of quick, easy to prepare activities for incorporating math into Morning Meeting. There are a total of 150 activities for grades K through 5. Each activity has a sidebar listing the correlations to NCTM Content and Process Standards, skills addressed, which Morning Meeting component (greeting, sharing, etc.) the activity is appropriate for, materials, how to prepare students for the activity, and vocabulary. All activities also include variations and extensions. An appendix to the book lists Common Core correlations.
As I glanced through the book, I had a personal connection to the very first activity for Kindergarten called All Grown Up. My birthday was in October, and one of my sweet 1st grade teachers had her kiddos make a birthday poster for me. Of course she had to incorporate some math, so she asked her firsties how old they thought I was and they listed the responses on the poster from least to greatest. The answers ranged from 11 years old to 61 years old! Cracked me up.
All Grown Up will likely yield similarly humorous results. This activity is incorporated into the morning message and sharing components of Morning Meeting. The message that students respond to is How old do you think you will be when you are a grown-up? Write your number below. During sharing, students use the following sentence frame to respond: “I think I will be a grown-up when I’m _______. I will _________.” The example from the book was I think I will be a grown-up when I’m 80. I will plant a big garden. The activity description includes tips for helping the kids successfully share, questions to reinforce listening and connections, suggestions for developing mathematical communication skills, and ideas for incorporating additional math concepts (putting the numbers in order, etc.).
This is a GREAT resource! It’s not too late to put it on your Christmas wish list. 🙂
I love this book! I got a copy last year and we keep it in the staff room. It gets a lot of use!