Morning Work Templates for All Seasons

Morning work templates can be a life-saver! And I’m not just saying that!

I know how foggy and sleepy I can be in the wee hours of the morning. I’m sure a lot of our kiddos feel the same way. Sometimes it’s hard to get revved up and moving even when you know you have a lot of work to do. This is why morning work is so important.

As a teacher, you have a ton of things to do before the start of the school day. And then when the kids start coming in there’s even more to do. Morning work is so helpful because it gives the students a task to focus on, giving you that much-needed time to get some of your “housekeeping” jobs done. Read this earlier post about morning work.

And once your students learn the morning routine they become self-directed, giving you the time and space that you need to get your own morning work done.

image of young student working with morning work templates

Some morning work ideas

To get your students doing some thinking, find a picture or image of a topic or lesson that you’re teaching later that day and project it onto your SmartBoard. Ask them to write about it. Most likely they won’t know what the picture is, so you can prompt them with questions such as “What do you see? What do you think is happening?”, etc. Doing morning work such as this pre-exposes your students to content they will see later on. It can lead to some fun and creative thinking!
Like anything, teaching your students the morning routine that you’re establishing is necessary at the beginning. Teach them by demonstrating how you want them to enter your room, where to put coats and boots, how and where to empty their backpacks, what to do with homework, and any other routines you’d like them to know. When they know what to do when they first get to your room, it becomes much easier to establish morning work routines. The idea is to get the routines established so that your students are able to function without your direct instruction.
Assign jobs to students whenever possible. They can do all sorts of tasks, such as collecting papers, passing out books, change the calendar or sharpen pencils.
The idea behind morning work is for your students to know what to expect when they enter your classroom. Aim for them to know what they’ll be learning, where to find what they need, and how to complete their work. It takes a few weeks for students to become independent with their morning routine, but once they do all of your hard work will have paid off!

morning work templates can help!

I can hear you all thinking “sure, its sounds great. But won’t that just be more work for ME to do? How am I going to find time to prepare worthwhile tasks and activities for them to do when I barely have enough time as it is?” The answer – morning work templates!

Image of seasonal morning work templates for PowerPoint and Google Slides with text "Morning Work Templates"

These seasonal themed Editable PowerPoint and Google Slides Teacher Templates include space to type the day and date, reminders of what to do when entering the classroom, as well as ‘must do’ and ‘may do’ assignments.

Remind your students of their morning assignments during arrival time by displaying them on your whiteboard or SMARTBoard.
Help your students become more independent and self-reliant by establishing a consistent routine for your classroom. Eliminate that repetitive question “What do I do now?” from your busy mornings, by displaying the answer before students can ask the question!
These editable templates also work well for center time by displaying the work to finish before moving on to centers.

These templates are fully editable with different background choices for each season. There are 5 slides for each template with 3 different styles:

TEMPLATES 1, 2 & 3 contain: