Morning Work Can Be Simple

Every school morning a teacher is greeted by sweet students who arrive at school with:

• backpacks, coats, mittens, hats, scarves, lunch boxes and folders

And they are often accompanied by a myriad of other items such as:

• notes, money, snacks, library and reading group books, projects, and who knows what else!

I love giving my students individual greetings, so I try to be as available as possible while students come in to the classroom. Thus, the creation of “morning work”. Morning work in my classroom is typically any job that students should be working on while other students are trickling into the classroom before the 2nd bell rings.

Things I have used as morning work in the past:

• phonics/math worksheets
• sight word worksheets
• writing journals
• Scholastic “Let’s Find Out” newspapers
• morning work buckets (playing “war”, building sight words with letters, dry erase boards- just give “morning work buckets” a pinterest search and you’ll find TONS of ideas!)

All of these things are fine...but my issue is this: often times, there are students who need one-on-one attention to complete these activities, and while I always try to put out work that can be completed independently, there is a very wide range of ability in every classroom.

My other big issue is that I do try my best to keep both the school curriculum and developmentally appropriate practices in check…which can be super difficult!! I purchased the book Developmentally Appropriate Practices in college, but I still refer back to it. With a background in early childhood education, it is incredibly important to me that I do what I can to allow my students to learn in ways that are appropriate for their age and development. If you don’t own a copy, it’s an important and useful book to keep on your shelf.

Making Morning Work More Independent

I do a few things in order to help my students to become more independent in the mornings so that I can greet all of my friends, talk to any grown-ups who may come down, put away snacks or other things that students bring in, etc… There is a LOT going on in the first 25 minutes as students arrive.

• allow students to get up and get drinks or go to the bathroom at any time during morning work (we have bathrooms and water fountains in our room, so this one is easy for me!)
• encourage students to use the “ask 3 and then me” rule. This means that before raising their hand to ask the teacher, they should first try to ask 3 students around them (unless of course, it’s an emergency).  This helps to stop the initial “What do I do?” questions…
• During writing, we use “kindergarten spelling”, which is simply encouraging students to write the sounds that they hear rather than worrying about whether or not it is spelled correctly. (*note- students also know that they must spell sight words correctly)
• I keep a cup of sharp pencils and a basket of big erasers. I allow students to get up and swap their pencils any time they need (dull pencils go into the dull cup, and they grab a pencil from the sharp cup)
• I allow students to create drawings or practice drawing shapes on the blank back of any morning work sheets
• be consistent and have clear expectations as to what students should be doing during this time- we all know how important consistency is to the little ones! 🙂
• hold students accountable for taking care of their own materials and supplies
• I came up with an awesome idea for morning work this year…

Here it comes..my very, very favorite morning work of all…

Creation Stations!!!

Here are a few photos:

This is the simplest, most fun morning work in kindergarten! Before I came up with this idea, I had gone through a ton of planning trying to figure out hands-on ideas that took very little planning. It was tough…most of the ideas I found took a ton of material organization, long explanations to the students, and a lot of clean-up when I switched the activities. Not what I wanted…

I have always loved the Reggio Emilia Approach, so I have a lot of loose materials lying around my classroom. I wondered….”Why can’t the students just CREATE their letters, numbers, and sight words?!”

For the first few Creation Stations, I set out several different types of materials for students to work with. Now that students know what to do, I simply write the letter, number, or sight word on the board and my students get to work. My students are constantly searching the room for new ways to create our word of the day! We typically do Creation Stations once or twice a week.

 

The boys in the photo above worked together (a group of 7 boys!) to create the word of out of large blocks. They first had”FO”. Through conversation with each other, they decided to  switch the letters around and make the “F” lowercase. So much cooperation and thinking was involved here.

If you try Creation Stations, let me know how it goes in your classroom! So Simple…:)