Morning Work

Stephanie

Jul 11, 20192 min read

Updated: Oct 2, 2019

Often times when we think about morning work for our students, we try to think of activities that will be engaging, fun, and meaningful to our students all without creating extra work for ourselves...because really, who wants to start the day off with 20 pieces of work added to our "grade" bin?!

With my daily schedule giving the students, at most, 15 minutes to unpack, get their seating tool and complete morning work before announcements and morning meeting, I had to become creative with what my students completed as morning work. This is when I discovered clever chart paper prompts that my students could respond to on sticky notes that they already had at their desk. Each day's prompt was a slight play on words which it made it more fun and easy for me to remember which type of prompt to display. Some days the prompts were fun and silly, other days they were meant for the students to truly reflect on how they could change a behavior or help a fellow classmate socially and emotionally.

Needless to say my students LOVED these daily prompts! It gave them a chance to share another part of their thinking with all of their peers without taking up a drastic amount of time! Each student put their name on a sticky note, replied to the prompt, and placed in the on the chart paper. Throughout the day students would look at the other responses and during closing circle we addressed the prompt and the answers given by everyone. It was a GREAT opportunity to discuss the prompt, the relevance behind it, and why it was important. About two-thirds of the way through the year I began placing the chart paper in the hallway and soon, other teachers in the building began responding to the prompts too! Often these teachers gave thought provoking answers, which increased the level of conversation during our closing circle!

The prompts that I use for morning work change daily! I use my prompts as a play on words such as "Magic Monday", "Tell Me About it Tuesday", "Warm a Heart Wednesday", "Think Outside the Box Thursday", and "Figure it Out Friday". Those are just a few examples, but I enjoy the play on words and so do the students! The prompts can be written to have simple correct or incorrect answers, or they can be written to lead to thought provoking replies, even from your youngest students! Check out the gallery below for a list of sample prompts for each day of the week as well as photos from them being used in my first grade classroom!

If you're looking for a new morning work activity for your students, I beg you to try these out! It takes such little prep work and it results in amazing conversation and zero extra papers to grade on your part. Your students will become more socially and emotionally aware as a result! Check out the posts that contain more information about each day's example prompts and pictures!