Morning meeting is a great time to address kindness with your students! You can incorporate read-alouds, group activities, discussions, and more!
Here are some of my favorite ideas for teaching kindness in morning meeting!
Kindness Spinner Freebie
Spinners are the perfect morning meeting activity! They are so much fun to do with the whole class. The anticipation of what the spinner will land on is instant student engagement!
The kindness spinner freebie is perfect for a month you focus on kindness in morning meeting. Each day, spin the spinner and see what random act of kindness the class will land on.
Challenge each student to complete that task during the day. Then, the next morning, students can share with the class, a partner, or in a turn and talk about how they completed the random act of kindness.
Get the freebie by entering your info below!
Interactive Kindness Activities
One of the best times to discuss something like kindness throughout the year is during morning meetings. This is a natural time to discuss social-emotional learning and build classroom community.
I think holding a morning meeting daily and consistently can really make a huge impact on your class. Students know to expect it because it is part of their routine!
The interactive character trait resource includes different pieces to use when teaching kindness to your class. The kindness ideas can be sprinkled throughout the day over a week or the month you teach kindness.
Character Trait Activities
“Caught Ya Slips” – Give these kindness cards to students when they show simple acts of kindness or good deeds.
“Kindness” Bingo Board – One way to get students excited about kindness is to start a kindness challenge. Whenever a student shows kindness, they can choose a piece to put on the bingo board. Students can even give shout-outs if they see someone being a good friend, saying kind words to one another, showing kind behaviors to classmates, or any other random act of kindness! After you get a bingo, the class gets a prize. This is an easy and fun way to reward kindness that only takes a minute or two here and there throughout the day.
Kindness Posters – Display while you're learning about what kindness is and how students can use it in the school community. Then, keep it somewhere year-round as a gentle reminder to show kindness to one another. You could even designate a specific bulletin board all about character traits.
Quote Squares – The quote squares can be given at the beginning of just introducing kindness or as you wrap up learning about it.
Character Education Bundle
This interactive character traits resource is great to teach during morning meetings. Use the slides, discussion and writing prompts, read aloud list, caught ya slips, and more to accompany your character education lessons in the classroom.
Here's what a month or week schedule could look like:
- To introduce the character trait, use the interactive slide with definitions and examples to discuss kindness.
- Another day, pick a book from the kindness read-aloud list to read with your class.
- The following week/day, choose a discussion slide and have students write responses on sticky notes, and facilitate a turn and talk to share.
- After a few sessions of learning about kindness, complete a kindness journal page together and assign one for morning work the next day.
There are so many ways you can use interactive resources to teach kindness.
Kindness Character Trait Freebie
If kindness is something you want to focus on with your class, I have a freebie for you below! This freebie includes the kindness class slide and the “caught ya” slips.
Kindness Book List
Read-alouds can really support conversations around kindness and are one of the best ways to teach it! They are a great place to start to help students see it modeled in different situations by the characters in the story.
While reading, pose some open-ended questions about kindness and see what students come up with. These read-alouds are some of my favorites for discussions around kindness.
- The Invisible Boy by: Trudy Ludwig
- I Walk with Vanessa by: Kerascoëet
- We're All Wonders by: R.J. Palacio
- Have You Filled a Bucket Today? By: Carol Mccloud
- The Gardener by: Sarah Stewart
- Those Shoes by: Maribeth Boelts
- What Does it Mean to be Kind? by: Rana DiOrio
Find these books and more character trait read-alouds HERE or visit the blog post, Using Read Alouds to Teaching Kindness.
Kindness Bulletin Board
The kindness interactive bulletin board is great for morning meeting because you can use each letter's statement in the word “Kindness” and incorporate it into a lesson!
- Create an anchor chart together of what each quote looks like and sounds like in the classroom
- Pair with a read aloud
Give students space to discuss what the quotes mean to them and what that looks like at school and in your classroom. Then, when students look at the bulletin board daily, it will mean something and be a great reminder of what your class values!
Teaching students the value of kindness in morning meeting with simple activities can be a great way to impact the whole class. Simply incorporating a kindness activity in your lesson plans for morning meetings can really help build a positive classroom community.
Pin the image below to visit this blog post later!
Leave a Comment