Morning Warm-up Work

Morning Work is an essential part of my day.  When the kids come in to the classroom, I need to have something for them to do independently for a few minutes while I'll take care of all those little things that need to get done in the morning (attendance, checking folders for notes, the occasional check-in with a parent, etc.).  This year, I developed my Morning Warm-up after looking at a number of different versions online.  I wanted something that would be routine but also offer some challenge.  I came up with "Number of the Day" and the "Daily Fix-It."

In the beginning of the year, I gave all of the kids a copy of the Morning Warm-up page in sheet protector and gave them a dry-erase marker.  We've had to replace a couple of wrinkled pages and dried out markers, but I don't have to worry about printing out a new worksheet every day.  Plus, because it's the same page every day the kids have gotten really good at the routine.

...And the "Number of the Day" addresses so many math skills!  The "Number of the Day" is always the number of days we have been in school (38, tomorrow).  The kiddos have to break the number into hundreds, tens, and ones, then tally the number, add and take-away 1, and add and take-away 10.  Since the routine is the same every day, I get to see how the kids are incorporating new strategies that have been introduced.  For instance, some are now using the 100s chart to do +/- 10 while others are still counting on their fingers.  I think that after Thanksgiving, I may transition to a new version with tens frames instead of tallying (because tallying over 50 takes a long time!).


The "Daily Fix-It" is always on the board when the kids walk in to the classroom.  I write 2 sentences replete with mistakes, like sight words spelled incorrectly, missing or wrong punctuation, and incorrect capitalization.  What I think is great about this activity is that it's really open-ended to allow for practicing any number of skills.  As the year goes on I imagine we can do more with grammar and complex sentence structure.  So far we still need the practice with our capitalization and punctuation, but we're getting there!