A New Take on Classroom Morning Work

Starting your day with a consistent routine is key to building a foundation of success for your students. Your students need to know what to expect from the moment they walk into your classroom each morning. When you implement meaningful activities and have a consistent routine, you are setting up your students for success. Classroom morning work is the perfect way to start each day. Morning work should be easy to manage and meaningful to your students.

Why Morning Work is So Valuable

The first few minutes of class are crucial. What your students do in those few minutes sets the tone for the rest of the day. When you implement a consistent routine, students learn what is expected and can jump in independently. This frees you up to take care of those daily administrative tasks like attendance and lunch choice.

Since students have a consistent routine they can develop independence skills. Before you know it, your students will be arriving, unpacking, and getting started on meaningful work activities. This structured time allows students to work on their own helping them build independence and show responsibility.

Not Your Typical Morning Work

If you have struggled to find morning work that keeps students learning and engaged, you are not alone! I have been there. I knew the importance of developing a consistent morning routine, but I could never find that perfect lesson to help me with providing a consistent learning routine for starting our day. Most morning work options I found focused solely on math and/or language arts skills. While this is great I wanted something more.

Because of those challenges, I created these paperless, no prep, science and social studies based morning work activities. While students will apply language arts and math skills they do so through the engagement of science and social studies topics. My students look forward to completing the different tasks each morning and are always excited to see what they will learn. 

The classroom morning work consists of a variety of activities for students to complete. Each day presents challenges along with fun and engaging mini-lessons. Some of these lessons have a video to help students dive deeper, as well as provide a visual for a better understanding.

This interactive resource is so easy to use. Simply project the calendar onto your screen, click on the day’s date, and let the fun begin! Your students will be eager to start their day.

Morning Work Activities Explained

Weird and Wacky Science Fact

Students will learn a science fact by viewing an image, reading text, and watching a video. It's a great way to add a little science fun to each and every day.

Today in History

In this section, students will read about something that happened on the same date in history. There are also likes to videos that give students more information. It's a great way for students to learn new things from history. With some serious and some silly - your students will eagerly anticipate what might have happened years before.

In Your Own Words

This is a great writing activity for getting your students thinking in the morning. Each day students will be asked to do a little writing. It might be reviewing what they learned from the daily science topic, or reviewing a previously taught language arts skill. By giving students an explicit writing activity, they won't be wasting time wondering what to write about.

Make a List

In this section, students will be making a list of items that meet the daily topic. It's a great way to work on vocabulary development and categorization.

Surprise Section!

This final section changes and is a great way to keep kids on their feet. This section will include activities like handwriting practice, drawing or riddles, figures of speech, and more!

Not Your Typical Morning Work

While this science and social studies based morning work is not your typical math or language arts spiral review - it is filled with so many skills that your students need.  Here are just a few of the important skills your students will work on with this Daily Science and Social Studies Morning Work: 

daily science facts through photos, text, and videos

daily social studies and historical facts through photos, text, and videos

grammar practice

writing skills

critical thinking activities

fine motor skills

cursive writing practice

The list could go on and on!  What really sets this apart is the engaging factor that the science and social studies sections add.  We may get moans and groans when assigning reading, writing, and math practice, but through this morning work, the same skills are woven through topics that students love!

This resource is easy to implement, engaging, and educational!  And . . . if you've never used morning work before it will transform your morning routine.

Try Science & Social Studies Morning Work for Free!

I love this resource so much because it made a huge difference in my classroom.  Not only were students engaged and working, but they were learning lots of new science and social studies topics, developing a larger vocabulary, and reviewing key skills without even realizing it!

I'd love for you to try this in your classroom so I created a free monthly sampler pack.  In this free resource you can see and try a daily morning work activity from every month.  

Pin it!

Be sure to save these fun and engaging classroom morning work ideas to your favorite classroom Pinterest board so you can come back anytime during the year for no-prep morning work your students will love!

Helping you teach fun and meaningful lessons is just...

My Kind of Teaching!

Motivating Students to Work Independently

How Do You Train Students to Work Independently?

Training students to work independently takes time.  Students have to build up the stamina to stay focused on the task at hand.  Don’t expect it to happen the first day or week…possibly not even the first month.

 

As a teacher, you are constantly striving to find opportunities to “fit it all in” while also working smarter, not harder.

 

Training students to work independently is yet another opportunity that will give you time to work in small groups to differentiate and meet the needs of all your students.  This allows for interventions with those students who need it without sacrificing your higher achieving students since this time is also perfect for enrichment learning.

Working independently with a worksheet is the norm in classrooms.  However, worksheets aren't necessarily interesting or motivating to students.

One solution is to have students complete these “Let’s Learn About” units that focus on science or social studies topics.  Students can watch the instructional videos over several days at their own pace and complete the reading and writing activities.  

This allows you to cover more than one subject at a time.

 

These Google Slides give you the ability to move slides around to fit the needs of your classroom best and place the writing activities where you want them.  

Art lessons and songs are even included in most lessons for more engagement and enrichment for your students.

 

Click here to see all of the current topics in my store.

These units can be completed independently by the students as they spend several days watching informational videos and extend their learning about some really cool things!

There are certainly other ways to find time in your classroom to utilize independent learning while working with students, but incorporating it into social studies and science is a big plus.  

When you can include reading and writing, you are triple-dipping the curriculum, which is a HUGE WIN all the way around!

Students will research and learn about topics and transfer that learning to graphic organizers and writing activities.

While students are taking responsibility for their learning, it gives you time to fill in gaps with students.

You can use that valuable time to pull small groups and complete intervention activities.

Finding things of high interest to students is always self-motivating toward getting your students to work independently.

 

Click here to try a FREE Let's Learn About Honeybees unit.

 

 How do you motivate your students to work independently?  Comment below and tell me.

Working hard to fit it all in is just…