Greetings can be especially important because they set the tone for the whole meeting—and the whole day. Here are answers to questions teachers frequently ask about greetings. The answers apply to the group activity component, too. Q: Students are not showing enthusiasm for greeting the way they did earlier in the year. What can I do? A: First of all, consider why students may be losing enthusiasm. For example, greetings that felt safe and right for mostly seven-year-olds might be feeling too narrow for eight-year-olds, who crave sanctioned ways to vent their boisterous side. Or perhaps you simply need more variety in your greetings. Take a look at the week as a whole and then find ways to vary the greetings from day to day. One day, pass a greeting around the circle; another day, do a group chant as a greeting; another day, do a greeting that gets children up and moving around the room or gives them a choice of whom to greet. Next week, switch to other greetings of the same types. You both then raise your arms in a wavelike motion. Q: I want students to have fun, but when we do bouncy, loud greetings, they tend to get silly and forget to take the act of greeting seriously. What can I do? It helps to focus on engagement rather than entertainment or frivolity. Second, the best learning comes from engagement, which can take the form of deep concentration, even fascination, as well as playfulness and laughter. So instead trying to make greetings entertaining for students, look for those that will engage them. Here are a couple to try. Remind students that only the person being greeted retrieves the airplane. How can I keep up? One way to gather new greetings is to ask colleagues to share ones their students enjoy. And remember that students themselves are excellent resources. When you ask for their help adapting familiar greetings or even coming up with new ones, their enthusiasm is sure to rise. Say Your Name is an example of a greeting that can be easily varied to feel new. Each student can use a different voice—soft, deep, high-pitched, spooky, etc. Students can sing the refrain in rap style, add hand-clapping and thigh tapping, or clap out the number of syllables in their names. To make the greeting livelier, students can add a movement to go with their names, which the class then mimics when they repeat the name. A bonus: it folds in sharing for those busy days when you have less time for Morning Meeting. Partners then tell each other their favorite book. Call out three new directions. Students move, greet, and share in those designated ways. Want more greeting ideas? Andy Dousis and Margaret Berry Wilson. Lara Webb and Margaret Berry Wilson. Joan Riordan, Jodie Luongo, and Kate Umstatter , 3rd edition. Roxann Kriete and Carol Davis. Check out our Save Tags: ,.
