Morning Meeting Activities

I LOVE Morning Meeting! My students are thrilled when it's their turn to be the morning meeting leader. This job comes with lots of responsibilities, but the most exciting seems to always be pulling a stick from the Activity jar.

We have these sticks:

1. 
This is a skip-counting game, which is a VERY important skill in 3rd grade. Each student starts standing, and I call out a number whose multiples will be the "buzz" numbers. As the students take turns counting, if a student's number is a "buzz" number, they must say "Buzz" instead of the number. Students have to sit down for two reasons: Incorrectly buzzing (or neglecting to buzz when they should have), or for being the person next after a buzzer. The last student standing, wins!

2. 

Sparkle is a spelling version of Buzz. I choose a student's spelling list, and they take turns spelling each word, letter by letter. The student after the whole word has been spelled says "Sparkle." Again, any incorrect letter - or standing after the "sparkle" - results in sitting down!

3.
I absolutely LOVE this game. I don't get a chance to do too many whole-group skill reviews like this, and I have a huge variety of cards that I found for free on TPT (Yes, TPT sellers are AWESOME!). I also made a set of cards for each MC3 social studies unit, which you can grab here!

4. 

This game is more of a "getting to know you" than a review game, but as a responsive classroom, I feel like it's important that the students get to know one another on a more personal level - and they love the opportunity to get creative with this one! This game starts with the morning meeting leader, who shares two true things and one lie about themselves. They then call on classmates to guess which statement was the lie. The classmate to have the correct guess gets to have their own turn! We typically get through 3 turns before we have to call it quits.

5.

I have a tub of questions that they've come up with for each other - things from "What's your favorite color?" to "If you could meet 3 people in history, who would you meet?" In this community-building activity, the morning meeting leader chooses a question from the bucket and asks the circle. We all take turns answering the same question.

6. 

Yup, this is the same as the car game you played as a kid! The morning meeting leader thinks of something and we have 20 chances to figure it out. I like this game because it helps the kids practice specific questions, and sometimes they really pull out the big guns! "Is it a noun?" "Is it a fictional character?" 

7. 

This game works just like 20 Questions, but it's a math version! The morning meeting leader thinks of a number, and the kids ask questions to figure it out. This one can be a great review of skills - They'll ask if it's a multiple of 5, whether it's even or odd, and numbers it's greater than or less than. An awesome and fun way to review math vocabulary!

8. 

When the morning meeting leader pulls this stick, they can choose any of the games above! Talk about a decision!

I've found that using the sticks helps to vary the activity we do each day, and each activity is absolutely no-prep for me - which is something I am VERY on board with! I love each activity and best of all, my kids have fun and learn at the same time... always a win in my book! :)