Just Kidding Morning Meeting

Last year my third graders, as a cohort, had some trouble with being mean with their "jokes". With no time to do an additional lesson in their rooms, and no extra time in the teachers' schedules, I created a "ready to go" Morning Meeting on the topic for them to use. With rare exceptions, our teachers are expected to conduct a complete Morning Meeting (MM) with their classes right after breakfast/morning work.

While MMs usually don't include read alouds, there was no question that Trudy Ludwig's Just Kidding needed to be used here. In an effort to make things easy on the teachers, I put everything (minus the greeting - my teachers often have students select these) in a PPT. I also used some of my favorite transluscent thought bubble sticky notes in the book for some discussion questions and passed my copy of the book around the five teachers.

The interactive message includes a prompt about other options for being funny. This is crucial here because most of my students, when saying unkind things to others, are doing it to make others laugh and not to actually hurt feelings. In true MM fashion, students read and respond to the message, engage in the greeting --> share --> activity and then read and discuss the message at the end. I gave two options for the share: one more personal and one more generic, allowing for teacher discretion in regards to her class' readiness. The activity involves using hand signals or body motions or moving to parts of the room (gotta include movement!) to decide if situations/dialogue are mean or funny.

I uploaded the PPT to my TPT store (for free) if anyone wants to use it for themselves! I put some additional details in the notes section walking through suggestions for use.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Just-Kidding-Morning-Meeting-Plans-or-Lesson-Plan-2821741

Leave a Comment Classroom Lessons, Responsive Classroom