Morning Meeting - With Technology?

Morning Meeting is something really important in my classroom.  It is a set-aside time when my students are able to reflect on behavioral goals, discuss social-emotional topics, and learn strategies for coping with situations or behaviors that they may experience in our classroom and school.  Brief academic topics are also practiced.  When I taught fifth grade, Morning Meeting flowed very smoothly, with students leading it and remaining engaged.  Since switching to third grade, I've had to make some changes to accommodate the younger group.

In our Morning Meeting, the format is as follows:

1. Greeting (brief, 1 minute vote, led by student leader)
2. Self-reflection:  "Something I did well yesterday was ___, something I can do better today is ___."  (10 min. M-Th)
3. Sharing:  "Today I'm feeling ____ because _____."  (10 min. M-Th)
4. Gratitude Circle:  "I am grateful that I have the opportunity to ____ because ____." (20 min., Fridays)
5. Poem of the Week (fluency practice, choral reading)
6. Word Wall (quick review)
7. Idiom of the Week (definition and sentence-making)
8. Weekly Focus Topic:  A social interaction or behavioral topic is studied, analyzed, and discussed for the week.  Examples include, "Using your Social Filter," "Showing grit," "Being a good friend," etc.

I am currently in the process of trying to revamp my Morning Meeting time so that I can ensure that more students are mentally engaged in the process, especially since such important Focus Topics are covered.  As it stands, technology is only used on the teacher end for display purposes on the interactive whiteboard.  Kids take turns participating and for most of the academic pieces, students are called on strictly on a volunteer basis.

I would like to incorporate technology into the Morning Meeting time in hopes of engaging students who are either too shy to volunteer to the big group or who--let's be honest--have tuned out what is going on around them.  I am thinking about using some kind of backchannel to engage these students so that their voices are heard and they can take ownership in these important lessons we are covering.  We are a 1:1 iPad district so this option would be viable.

Some of my thoughts/concerns: 

• I don't want to lose the face-to-face experience of Morning Meeting.  This is the one time of the day where we are all together in one group, deliberately looking at each other as we learn about making personal connections and how to act toward one another.  I don't want to turn it completely digital, but I do realize that technology can help support what we are doing.
• I don't want the technology piece to take up extra time that we don't have.  We are pressed for time as it is during Morning Meeting.  While the block is technically from 7:35-8:20, we stop MM early at 8:05 so that I can fit an extra reading group in to Guided Reading rotations before that group leaves for other services.  So I do not have extra time to play with here.

This week, I will be looking into how I may be able to make some small changes to Morning Meeting using Google Forms, Nearpod, Padlet, and other options.  More to come!