Morning Meeting (language discussion)

‘Tip of the Tongue’ meeting/ ‘Morning Meeting’/ or whatever you want to call it!

Have a section of wall/ board to display topics for discussion during ‘‘Morning Meeting ’. Ideally this could be in your ‘speaking and listening corner’/ oral language area. It is a perfect oral language activity for revising previous work, practicing and reinforcing new vocabulary and can be used as an opportunity for children to give presentations/ be reporters, look at items using the visualize and discussion etc.

Only takes about five to ten minutes! You need to reinforce new vocabulary. If you don’t use it…you lose it!

Pupils are encouraged to be aware of gesture, facial expressions, audibility, tone of voice and clarity of enunciation when communicating with others.

You can use the ‘Tip of the Tongue’ meeting  to enable pupils to give and take turns and to practice the common social functions e.g. expressing appreciation, approval and disapproval, asking questions to elicit feelings and views and also expressing concern and support.

The following are just ideas, you can discuss anything, revise vocabulary, put up a morning riddle, describe a character using physical characteristics vocabulary for pupils to draw.

• Discuss word of the day. Use the top tips mentioned on ‘Tips for Teaching Vocabulary’ post when teaching the word to make it memorable! Display word-of-the-day and recent words. Revise recent words using one of the games e.g. vocabulary block.
• Discuss idiom of the week.
• Discuss Tongue Twister of the week.  (Have tongue twister race etc.)
• Feelings (important for well-being, but also great for discussing synonyms/ antonyms for emotion words discussed…let’s widen vocabulary knowledge, any way to close the word gap.
• Current news affairs/ Weather report: Use the questions who, what, where, when, why and how to give a report. For junior classes have a Show and Tell or as pupils find asking the correct questions have a ‘show and ask’. Pupil holds up an object (possibly from home) and the other pupils ask about it using the question words on display for the Tip of the Tongue meeting.

I originally came up with the idea of a morning meeting on creating my oral language and vocabulary development resource ‘Tip of the Tongue’ now re-branded ‘Language for Living’ as it contains even more content but in neater, lighter box! Interestingly, I had to call the ‘Morning Meeting’ the ‘Tip of the Tongue’ meeting in the printed resource as a morning meeting already exists in America…it’s where they do daily morning debates! (Still, for the purpose of the classroom I still call it the Morning Meeting…it tends to roll off the tongue a bit better 😍)