Mornings can be rough for elementary school teachers. If you do not have a daily routine in place, students can make your life difficult. This blog post will explain our top 5 morning work ideas for the upper elementary classroom.
Below are our top 5 ideas to make mornings a smooth part of your school day.
1. Student Check-In
When our students arrive, they are responsible for making their Daily 3 choices (based off of the Two Sisters Daily 5). They have to pick the three card choices that they will do for the day, and then put them next to their names on the chart. This is an easy way for us to do attendance as well. The students then return to their desks and get their assignment notebooks and home folders out so we can check them and have a short conversation with each student which also helps with building relationships and connecting with them daily.
2. Seat Work
Another option when students enter the room is to have daily seat work in place. This can be practice math sheets that work on skills learned previously, Words Their Way or spelling options, or even just simple journaling into a notebook. If your students know the expectation, they will get to work right away.
3. Classroom Jobs
We have found that giving students responsibilities in the classroom also helps tremendously with classroom management. When students have a job to do in the morning, you can watch them be responsible and take pride in what they have to do. We created more life-like jobs for our upper elementary students. Below are a few examples.
-Lumberjack: This student is responsible for sharpening pencils at the beginning of the day. We have two cans set up in the room. One for pencils that are sharpened, and one for pencils that need to be sharpened. The lumberjack knows to try and get as many unsharpened pencils done before instruction starts.
-President: This student is the leader in the classroom. That means s/he gets to lead the Pledge of Allegiance, is first in line, and even gets to help the teacher make decisions if the class is voting on something. The pride you will see in this child’s face is amazing. The President job is truly the best!
-Secretary: The job of this student is to take any notes down to the office, help pass out papers, and do any other secretarial type job for the classroom. Students like the responsibility of leaving the room in the morning too!
-Electrician: This student gets to turn on and off the lights, make sure electronical devices are plugged in, and gets to help the teacher with any powerpoints or videos that are shown. This job is especially fun for those students who like to get out of their seats. I’m sure you know the ones we are talking about!
-There are also more jobs that we have as well.
You can find our classroom jobs resource by clicking here or on the picture below.
4. Read
A go-to idea for daily morning work is to have the students pull out a book and read. This can also be a time where students can check out a book from the class library which helps on distractions later in the day if students need to get a book. If students are reading, it can be a quiet time for you to take attendance and get your mind in check for the rest of the school day!
5. Daily Work Slide Shows
We saved our favorite morning work choice for last! This summer we spent quite a bit of time developing fun and engaging Daily Work activities for the entire school year. Yes, these Daily Work Activities go for 36 weeks! Each Daily Work bundle includes:
-a teacher tips sheet to guide you through the process
-a teacher tracking sheet to document how your students are performing
-a direction sheet on how to turn a PDF into a slideshow
-and a PDF document containing the 36 weeks of activities
Each day of the week has a different theme:
Monday: journal writing
Thursday: logic and thinking puzzles
We are excited to use these this school year! You can find all of these Daily Work resources bundled together for one huge discounted price here or clicking on the picture below!
We would love to hear what your morning routine is like for your classroom. Please comment!
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