Winter Templates for Morning Work

Morning work can be a very helpful tool for taming the morning chaos and managing your classroom.

What are the benefits of morning work?

Teaching students a morning routine calls for explicit modeling and practice. A productive morning work routine will set up a productive day. Students, especially the youngest ones, thrive on routine. It gives them confidence when they know exactly what will happen and what’s expected of them.

Effective morning routines for students starts the day off on the right foot and on a positive note. Students will be more focused on their tasks and activities throughout the day, allowing for better behavior and fostering a positive classroom community.

There are benefits for you as well. Once students know their routine, they will be much more independent, allowing you time to take care of “housekeeping” details like attendance or giving you time to check in with each student. Your classroom will hum along smoothly right from the beginning of the day. So much less stress for everyone!

Examples Of Morning Procedures and Routines

Morning routines do not have to be long or complicated. Anything that you want and/or need your students to do in the morning would be considered as part of their routine.

Some ideas for morning procedures:

• Going to lockers or cubbies and putting away jackets and backpacks
• Bringing materials needed for the day into the classroom
• How to enter the classroom
• Storing their materials at their seats or desks
• How, where and when to hand in homework
• When to go to breakfast
• Turning in lunch money (this one may be becoming obsolete since in many schools students have accounts or cards to pay for lunch)
• When it’s okay to chat with their friends
• Sharpening pencils
• Using the restroom
• Checking the daily schedule/agenda
• How to read the morning message (the WHOLE message, not just the first 2 sentences)

Some of these ideas might seem so simple and basic that you would be inclined to think that you really don’t need to spend time teaching them. After all, don’t students already know how to enter the classroom?

One would think so … until you meet the student who insists on charging in at full speed and throwing their stuff on their desk from across the room! After a day or two of that, you’ll be quickly teaching your kids the correct way to enter your classroom!

Most of the above ideas focus on tasks that students do before the start of the academic day as they’re arriving at school and settling in. But part of their morning routine should consist of some independent work. This is the perfect time for reading, writing, review or practice. This is where the morning message comes in. See this earlier blog post for more winter writing ideas and a freebie!

the morning message

This is a task that you’ll be doing daily, so it needs to be easy and quick for you to do. Writing everything by hand on the white board takes more time than it should.

Projecting your morning message on the SMART board will save you time when you prepare the message for the day. It becomes a quick and easy task when you have a template all ready to go so that the only thing you have to do is change the day and date and the morning work steps.

I’ve created a whole series of templates to make preparing your morning work message as quick and painless as possible.

This particular one is winter themed. But I also have many other themed templates for topics such as seasons, special occasions and just plain fun!

Each template comes in both Powerpoint and Google Slides versions. This resource has three Powerpoint templates and links to three Google slides templates, all fully editable of course.

All of the templates have five slides, one for each day of the week, with different winter-themed backgrounds. Two of the templates have different editable instructions, such as Prepare, Complete, and If You Finish Early. The third template has no instructions, so you can set the template up in the way that works best for you.

These templates will free up your mornings and help your students achieve some independence. What does your morning routine look like?

Here are some other special occasion templates you might like!