Ideas for Morning Meeting Topics for Upper Elementary
Creating a strong classroom community is so important to the function of our classroom and the well-being of our students. Today I’m sharing 17+ ideas for morning meeting topics for that are perfect for your upper elementary morning meetings. Teaching for social and emotional growth through morning meeting lessons is my favorite way to impact my 4th grade or 5th grade classroom community. While the excitement of morning meeting is strong at the beginning of the year, I know it can be daunting to keep coming up with topics and ideas for how to spend your precious minutes. I hope this list gives you some new topics for morning meeting that you can plan to discuss and implement during your morning meeting lessons.
In my theme-based morning meetings, I like to focus on topics that serve a few focused purposes:
setting the foundation for how we treat one another through topics like belonging, friendship, kindness, and compassion
helping students develop empathy and understanding of classmates that they may not be friends or “friendly” with
creating a space and forum for resolving conflict, providing students with the skills to solve conflicts appropriately, and for understanding the benefits of compromise
encouraging students to develop perseverance, growth mindsets, and provide opportunities for goal setting and reflection
encouraging the development of positive character traits like courage, integrity, and responsibility
helping students develop their emotional intelligence and abilities to respond to life’s challenges
That’s a great preview of the morning meeting topics I like to address throughout the year, but here’s a bit about each one.
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17+ Morning Meeting Topics for Upper Elementary
1) A SENSE OF BELONGING
Establishing an environment where students extend a sense of belonging to one another is of utmost importance to me at the start of the year. Belonging is my first morning meeting topic and I address it right away on the first day of school using the picture book Big Al by Andrew Clements.
You can read all about my first Belonging lesson at this blog post and grab the entire belonging theme unit for free, Setting a Foundation for a Strong Classroom Community through Belonging Themed Lessons.
🌟In each theme unit, you’ll find 15 days of editable lesson plans, bulletin boards, picture book and other resource recommendations, student journal pages, quotation reflections, and Google Slides versions for the teacher (think anchor charts and recording slides to teach the concepts and capture insights from your discussions) and more! The free belonging theme unit is the perfect introduction to theme-based morning meetings and the one I suggest using at the beginning of the year (or anytime!) to launch your morning meetings.
2) KINDNESS
Kindness is probably one of the most obvious morning meeting topics to bring into your discussions. I tend to move through my kindness lessons pretty quickly because kindness is a concept that students have (dare I say) nearly been beaten over the head with in past years. While I am a proponent of teaching lessons in kindness, I typically introduce kindness as a precursor to my compassion-themed morning meeting topic. I really like to get right on to my compassion lessons and I’ll share why in the next section.
🌟 After launching my kindness unit with a read aloud, video, or quotation analysis, we are ready to have an in-depth discussion about our morning meeting topic. I give students a journal sheet with 3 discussion questions and a space for illustration to help them organize their thoughts for the class discussion.
3) COMPASSION
Compassion is an important morning meeting topic to introduce to 4th grade and 5th grade students. While acts of kindness often come from a place of making ourselves “feel good,” acting on compassion means that we have “recognized the suffering of another human being,” have empathy for what they are going through, and are compelled to act because of that empathy and recognition.
It is important to bring the vocabulary of compassion into our classroom so that students have a deeper version and understanding of kindness; it is compassion that guides us in the actions that we can take to most support and help those around us.
Compassion is about being “in-tune” and conscious of the needs of others. I want my students to learn so much more than the importance of a kind deed or a “random act” of kindness—I want my students to think outside of themselves and to be able to relate to the needs and feelings of others on a deeper level. I’ve shared lessons and ideas from my Compassion Themed Morning Meeting unit in this blog post.
🌟 After our launching a morning meeting topic and holding the initial student discussion, we begin building the theme. During this phase, we continue building the theme through read alouds, videos, quotations, journaling, and other activities. We work to develop big ideas on the topic by exposing students to more and more examples of the theme in action. During this phase, students will begin making connections between the different stories, quotes, and videos. Check out all the ways I immerse students in the big ideas surrounding compassion in my Compassion Morning Meeting Unit.
4) PERSEVERANCE
Long before growth mindset became an educational phenomenon (and an amazing one at that!), I realized that my students needed to be encouraged to persevere through the “hard parts” of so many aspects of their education. I was constantly talking about “being perseverant” and not giving up during math lessons and trying to develop my students’ awareness of how things that presented themselves as difficult at first became things that they soon mastered. Hence, the creation of my Perseverance Morning Meeting Unit!
The topic of perseverance fit right in to my goals for morning meeting. With stories like Wilma Unlimited (Kathleen Krull) and Fly, Eagle, Fly (Christopher Gregorowski), students learn the importance of believing in oneself and not giving up!
🌟 Each morning meeting unit includes teacher lesson ideas and read aloud titles that perfectly pair with the activities, student journal pages, quotations, and bulletin board materials included. You’ll love the suggested lesson ideas for Perseverance!
5) RESOLVING CONFLICT
Elementary school teachers, GOT CONFLICT?! Do you have tons of time to DEAL WITH CONFLICTS among students during your teaching time? No way! Dealing with student conflicts and disagreements when you really just need to and want to teach your lessons is one of the most frustrating aspects of teaching. However, when we spend time discussing how to resolve conflicts early in the year, we prepare our students with some of the skills necessary to talk through their issues.
During our RESOLVING CONFLICT morning meeting topic unit, we brainstorm classroom routines and strategies for dealing with common conflicts. I teach students 6 Steps for Resolving Conflict based on a list I found online, but students and myself take the list of steps and make them our own to work for our classroom.
🌟Explicitly teaching definitions is a major part of my theme units. So much so, I’ve created definitions to post on my morning meeting bulletin board to help me teach the vocabulary to students and to remind us of those words as we move through our lessons and discussions. Your heart will beat extra happily when you hear students using the new words to describe characters and events in your school day!
6) INTEGRITY
I define integrity as the “quality of being honest and adhering to strong principles and character.” Integrity is a topic to address in morning meetings so that we can encourage our students to act with integrity and to help them begin formulating and solidifying their ideas about what is “right” and what is “wrong.”
I use Mr. Peabody’s Apples by Madonna as my foundational read aloud for introducing integrity as a morning meeting topic. This book sparks a discussion about protecting one’s reputation, not starting rumors about others, and making things right when you have done something wrong. I’ve shared some ideas for Integrity themed morning meeting lessons in this blog post.
🌟 I like to incorporate symbolic thinking by allowing students to draw a symbol related to the topic in their journal pages, like this one in my Integrity Morning Meeting Unit. It helps students develop their big ideas about the theme and make connections between texts and discussions we are having.
7) HAPPINESS
During the first week of school, I am always sure to read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. It is not uncommon for us to have a few students in our classrooms who generally lean towards a negative outlook on life. I find it so important to teach students that “Happiness is an inside job” and that they are responsible for managing their emotions and using coping skills (along with MY SUPPORT in helping them learn how to deal with all of the emotions of growing up, going through puberty, and handling interpersonal relationships). I also like to discuss “happiness stealers” and help students overcome grumpiness by learning to laugh at life more often.
Obviously, my Happiness Morning Meeting Unit doesn’t address students who truly need some therapy to overcome depression or deep negative outlooks on life, BUT I have found that it is EVEN MORE IMPORTANT for us to have conversations about HAPPINESS, what makes us unhappy, and our PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY to take care of ourselves and our feelings WHEN WE HAVE NEGATIVE/SAD/DEPRESSED students in our classrooms. I have truly seen it make a difference in their lives and their behavior in the classroom environment—and I have had parents extend gratitude to me because I took the time to place importance on their child’s overall well-being.
🌟 Fortunately, I found a way to make my morning meetings more meaningful and do MORE for my classroom community, students' social emotional learning AND THE LITERACY STANDARDS I'M REQUIRED TO TEACH! Check out all that is packed into my Happiness Morning Meeting Unit!
8) INDIVIDUALITY
With books like Stand Tall, Molly Lou Melon (Patty Lovell), A Bad Case of the Stripes (David Shannon), and my personal favorite, Wings (Christopher Myers), individualism and the importance of being oneself is the perfect topic for morning meetings. Upper elementary students are often at the age where they notice differences in their classmates and themselves, and we’ve all had students who are really unique and quirky. It’s important that we teach our students to CELEBRATE differences and what makes us unique. That’s just what my Individuality Morning Meeting Unit does!
Being brave enough to be an individual also comes into play when we discuss COURAGE, INTEGRITY, and standing up for what we believe in. Often, we have to go against the crowd to maintain our individuality. We have to accept ourselves for who we are, and in doing, so, we hopefully learn to be more capable of accepting others—which also leads to compassion, empathy, and a sense of belonging! (Wow! Have you noticed how so many of the morning meeting topics intertwine?!)
🌟 In many of my morning meeting units, we discuss the struggles one may face when addressing the topic at hand and then come up with strategies for overcoming those challenges. In my Individuality Morning Meeting Unit, students generate examples of challenges that make it difficulty to honor their individuality first in their student journals before gathering for a whole group discussion.
9) COMPROMISE
The ability to compromise is deeply connected to how possible it is for students to solve their conflicts. I love incorporating compromise as a morning meeting topic. I want students to learn to listen to one another’s perspectives in hopes of understanding one another better. We learn from books like Feathers and Fools (Mem Fox) to discuss what happens when no one is willing to bend or sit down and listen to the other’s side.
🌟 Morning meeting theme cover pages, like this one in my Compromise Morning Meeting Unit, are one of the several components I incorporate into my morning meeting routine. On the first or second day of a new morning meeting theme unit, students receive theme cover pages to glue into their journals. The cover pages include the theme title, important vocabulary words, and 5 or more related quotations that we will analyze throughout our unit. They provide the perfect reference for students as we have discussions about the theme and as they complete written reflections.
10) GOAL SETTING
Goal setting is one of my FAVORITE topics to discuss with my 4th grade and 5th grade students. I think it is so important to begin teaching children how to think about setting and achieving goals at an early age, because children who can set goals, come up with strategies for achieving them, deal with setbacks, and persevere become adults who have a better understanding of how to make their dreams and ambitions come true.
I also feel that goal setting is a crucial component in creating an educational setting where students take responsibility for their learning and progress. I have students generate social, academic, and personal goals in my Goal Setting Morning Meeting Unit.
🌟 I use quotes A LOT throughout my morning meeting units! They are great for grabbing students’ attention and hooking them when I am launching a new morning meeting topic, pushing students to think deeper about the big ideas surrounding a topic, and using quotation analysis as a culminating writing exercise to wrap up a unit. I like to provide my students with five quotations to paste into their student journals at the beginning of a new unit. You’ll love the ones included in my Goal Setting Morning Meeting Unit!
11) FRIENDSHIP
We know that the changes that 4th and 5th grade students go through often involve changing friendships, developing new friendships, and trying to understand how to navigate the social environment of growing up.
When I address friendship as a morning meeting topic, I tend to focus on how friends enrich our lives. One of my favorite books to read aloud for my friendship focus is C.R. Mudgeon by Leslie Muir. C.R. is quite an introvert and when his new neighbor, Paprika (spicy as the name implies!) moves in next door, CR comes out of his shell—after a few encounters based on his annoyance with her. It’s definitely a perfect “opposites attract” story—and perfect for a “friends enrich our lives” discussion.
🌟 Each of my social emotional theme units include 15 days of editable lesson plans. You’ll love the ideas I’ve included for the friendship unit.
12) COURAGE
Courage, defined as “showing bravery in the face of fear,” is an important topic that I address in morning meetings because I want my students to act courageously when a situation calls for it. Discussing the importance of being courageous in situations where it is unpopular, risky, or challenging to “stand up” empowers our students to make good decisions when facing different situations.
I also want to create a classroom community where students feel safe to experience failure, to share their fears, AND to step outside of their comfort zones. Sometimes I break my COURAGE unit into two morning meeting topics—personal courage and historical courage. During our historical courage unit, we turn our attention to people who have courageously fought for social justice, equal rights, and worked to change the world for the better.
🌟 I like to use a variety of student journal pages to allow for different activities during our morning meeting theme units. These activity pages allow for more personal reflection, written responses, brainstorming ideas, problem-solving scenarios, and creating lists and symbolic illustrations…just to name a few! You’ll love the student journal pages included in my Courage Morning Meeting Unit!
13) MANAGING EMOTIONS
While I like to address happiness as separate morning meeting topic early in the year, our students struggle with managing many other emotions—stress, anxiety and worry, anger, jealousy, and sadness. It’s important that we discuss strategies for dealing with these emotions, help students identify the triggers that cause them, and create an overall supportive climate where we help our “young” students learn to handle life’s challenges appropriately. During my Managing Emotions Morning Meeting Unit, I also like to address what it feels like when we are relaxed and strategies for calming our minds because students need to discuss and visualize their ideal personal state so that they can tap into it more often.
🌟 I use my student journal pages as tools to thoughtfully incorporate key vocabulary for each topic as well as add new vocabulary as students delve deeper into the unit, like this one in my Managing Emotions Unit. This vocabulary is critical for helping students develop their ability to communicate their thoughts and ideas so that they can more easily communicate about social and emotional topics.
14) RESPONSIBILITY
Oh, the struggles of lack of responsibility with upper elementary students and how that wreaks havoc on our classroom environments and our personal stress as teachers! It’s so important that we discuss responsibility as a topic and that we give our students time to process how they can become more responsible and act with responsibility in unique situations. My Responsibility Morning Meeting Unit helps students do just that! One of my favorite activities for discussing responsibility in this unit is a set of scenarios where students are asked how they would be responsible in that situation.
🌟 If you need or want digital resources for Morning Meeting, I’ve got you covered with Google Slides versions of each theme set!
15) INTRINSIC MOTIVATION
Intrinsic motivation is one of my favorite morning meeting topics. During this unit, I help students identify what motivates them to be and do their best. I like to address motivation head on as I think it helps students to take ownership of their potential and learn to rely on outside motivations more often. During the Intrinsic Motivation Unit, we compare and contrast intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and discuss the benefits of intrinsic motivation and the concerns that come with needing to be extrinsically motivated too often.
🌟 Self reflections and goal setting are one of the several components I incorporate into my morning meeting routine. The questions and rating scales on the self-reflection get them thinking about their personal abilities with the goal. I recommend that students come up with just one goal to focus on during the unit. In fact, I typically use them to launch a new morning meeting theme!
16) GROWTH MINDSET
Growth Mindset is an obvious topic for our discussions (and I’m so glad that Carol Dweck’s work has caused the topic to sweep into classrooms across the world!). I love to include Growth Mindset as a morning meeting topic because it provides the perfect space in my school day to address key vocabulary and the difference between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. Growth mindset conversations piggyback and complement so many of our morning meeting topics—perseverance, intrinsic motivation, goal setting, and managing emotions. Developing a growth mindset can even be a layer of our discussions when teaching students about resolving conflict and developing friendships—if resolving conflict, developing friendships, being kind, or any other topic is challenging for individual students, we can address how a growth-minded person would approach those challenges.
🌟 Aside from using read alouds and quotations to capture the attention of my students when introducing a new morning meeting topic, like Growth Mindset, I also LOVE using short videos! In fact, I’ve got a whole blog post that lists my favorite videos to use during morning meetings for each topic!
17) GRATITUDE
Teaching students about gratitude (in more ways than learning to say “Thank you”) can positively impact their emotional well-being, improve their lives, their social interactions, and their outlook on the world. Not to mention, investing in teaching and helping students practice gratitude can have a multitude of wonderful ripple effects within your classroom! This Gratitude Morning Meeting Unit stresses the importance of regularly practicing gratitude and turning our mindsets to how we can be grateful in our lives and our circumstances in order to develop the “muscles” of gratitude.
I’ve shared 16 ideas for teaching students about gratitude in this blog post. One of my favorite activities to do with students in this unit is teaching them how to adopt a lens of gratitude and “flip” their complaints or negative thoughts to an attitude of gratitude.
🌟 Student journal pages are an important component of my morning meetings. The gratitude theme pages are some of students favorites!
A Bit More about Theme-Based Morning Meetings
My morning meeting topics are taught through theme-based morning meeting lessons. I focus on one topic or theme for 1-3 weeks (depending on how deeply I want to investigate the topic with my students and based on how greatly my students need to develop their abilities in that area).
Along with my theme-based morning meeting topics, I am sure to introduce students to key vocabulary for each topic. This key vocabulary is critical for helping students develop their ability to communicate their thoughts and ideas and to establish a common language in our classroom. With exposure to those new words and definitions, we can now communicate more easily about social and emotional topics.
I have developed each of these morning meeting topics into morning meeting theme sets that utilize picture books, online videos, group discussions, theme-related quotations, key vocabulary, suggested activities, student journal pages, and much more. Not only do I teach my students about the themes listed above, but through morning meeting topics designed around common themes in literature, I am able to enhance and teach quite a bit of my key literature standards.
FREE MORNING MEETING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
If you want to learn more about theme-based morning meetings, you can sign up for my “Getting More out of Morning Meeting” professional development where I go into detail about my morning meeting routine, the importance and benefits of theme-based morning meetings, and tips and advice on scheduling morning meetings into your school day. If you want to learn more about the training before signing up, you can read the details here.
What other morning meeting topics would you like to see added to this list? Did I leave off an important morning meeting topic that you address during your meetings? Let us know in the comments! I am always looking for new topics!