It's that time of the year when every teacher is thinking about the same thing (whether they mean to or not) - back to school! We think about school supplies, labels, curriculum planning, and classroom routines. While every routine is important for your students to learn, your morning routine is crucial because it's how your students (and you) start the day every day! Incorporating some kind of morning work/task in your classroom morning routine can protect your sanity and provide many benefits for you and your students.
Your entire morning routine teaches your student how to be independent and responsible. Where their backpack/supplies go, jobs/tasks to complete, communication, turning in work and self-sufficiently starting their day are all skills that are inadvertently taught during this time. When you show up to school every day, do you wait for your principal to tell you what work to start? No! That's not how it goes in the work force, and we can teach our students that while they are young. It's their responsibility to start working when they show up, and morning work provides that opportunity!
This one goes with "Student Responsibility", but focuses more on behavior. If you establish morning work as part of your morning routine, you won't have to answer 20+ questions about what your students should be doing every second as soon as they walk through the door. And since your students know what is expected of them, this will help minimize behavioral issues that could arise from students' confusion/boredom. Of course it won't eliminate every possible behavioral issue that could occur before the bell even rings (thank you, bus rides), but it helps your students stay on course. This benefit is also helpful for your SPED students who crave routines. Knowing that they have a completed task every single morning will prepare your SPED students for the day ahead and offer a smooth start.
While morning work should
never be busy work, this time does give you the opportunity to complete the 549 things to do in the morning - attendance, lunch count, check folders/homework, talk to parents, field trip money, office forms, classroom forms, listen to stories your sweeties just HAVE to tell you RIGHT THEN....it's never-ending! As your students are completing their work, get those little things taken care of so you can devote the rest of your attention to your kiddos.
As mentioned, morning work should
not be busy work. Occasionally, I would provide a coloring sheet or fun activity for special days - but this happened maybe 5 times a year. On regular days, I provided work on a current skill I wanted to reinforce for extra practice or a review skill that I wanted to keep fresh on the brain. It's so discouraging when your students forget a skill that you went over repeatedly three months ago! Use morning work to keep those skills alive in your classroom. Some teachers choose to have morning work packets in folders that students keep in their desk. Others use a morning journal so students can respond to a writing prompt. It's up to you to decide what is best for your students. I've done both- my 2nd graders had morning work folders with a daily sheet, but my 4th graders have a daily writing prompt from the reading series we use. Whatever you choose, just be consistent.
To me, morning work is a chance to wake up my students' brains to prepare for the day ahead. I never take morning work for a grade - to me, it's not a fair way to take an assessment. I never knew what some of my students were coming to me from - a bad home situation, a bully on the bus, an empty stomach, anxiety over a personal issue. If those things are fresh on their minds coming into school, would I get a true picture of what they know? Probably not! So I used the opportunity just to wake up their brains and review skills. We would go over the morning work or writing prompt and answer questions before we started our first lesson of the day. However, you could use your morning work for writing samples, RTI samples, and parent-teacher conference evidence without having to give a grade. Hello informal assessments!
Using this set time in the morning can help you AND your students mentally prepare for the day. No matter what hectic situation occurred the night before or that morning before school, this is a chance to push the mental "restart" button and make a decision to have a great day! You may choose to have soft music playing in the background to create a calming environment or no noise at all. My students are allowed to have some small talk in low voices, but it is not a time to catch up on all the things. That is saved for lunch and recess. That's because I want my students to get their mind right so we can have a successful day.
Only YOU know your students best, so you know what elements you need in a morning routine and what will work best for morning work. If you make it a point to strongly reinforce your expectations during these precious moments in the morning, it will help your year run much more smoothly! Life happens, things come up - if you have to be a little late coming to school in the morning due to a sick child, traffic, or car not starting, you will have a peace of mind knowing that your students will know what to do while someone fills in for you.
If you teach 2nd grade, I have monthly CCSS morning work packets in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Click
HERE to check them out!
