Morning Work

One of the things that has completely changed for me over the past couple of years is how I do my morning work.  I teach at a school where students trickle in the classroom from 7:20-7:45, so I usually have a lot of students at school almost 30 minutes before the day technically begins.  I've done all types of things for morning work:  DOL, Accelerated Math, Mountain Language, Mountain Math, independent reading, creative writing....you name it.  This year, I'm giving my morning work a complete overhaul by eliminating some of the not totally necessary things and consolidating my favorite activities.

All of my students' morning work will be kept in their Morning Work Folder.  That's not the most creative name for a folder is it?  In this folder, my students will have their Weekly Word Problems, Number of the Day, their Weekly Word Wizard,  and their multiplication facts graph.  These assignments will be the very first thing my students do when they walk in the classroom each day.

In November of last year I added Weekly Word Problems to my morning work, and I loved them!  They really made a significant difference in my students' word problem solving skills.  Students independently complete three word problems everyday (they write their own word problem on Friday), and then we go over them together once the day officially begins.  I always have my students show their work with a number sentence and circle key words in the word problems.  The August-October Weekly Word problems only have addition and subtraction problems, and then I slowly begin adding multiplication problems in November and December, and then in January through the rest of the year, students have to solve addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division problems.

Then a little later in the year, I also added Number of the Day activity to our morning work routine, which I also loved because of the repetition of skills practice.  I made two different versions of this activity, because I know my students won't be ready for all of the skills practiced in this task until much later in the year.  To help save on time and paper, I had my students complete the top half one day and the bottom half the next day, rather than completing the whole assignment in one day.  It's not the easiest assignment, but it does follow right along with the Common Core Standards.

I wish I could take credit for creating the Weekly Word Wizard that we'll use next year, but I can't.  I bought those from Sunny Days, and let me just say that they're a great language arts review.  There are 21 different questions each week, and these questions are a great spiral practice for students.

The very last part of our morning work is students' multiplication graph.  My students take a daily timed multiplication test (20 questions in 1 minute-more on that later), and on Fridays they take a big 5 minute 100 questions multiplication facts test.  Each Friday, I have my students graph the results of their test by coloring in how many questions they answered correctly.  I like giving my students this visual representation of their progress on their math facts.  This could easily be adapted to addition facts, subtraction facts, or division facts as well.  You can click on the graph for your free copy!