The bell rings and you hear it, the rumble of kindergarten students rushing to their classrooms ready to start their morning routine. After a few of the quickest minutes ever, your class is full and it is time to start the day.
If only it were that easy. One student is trying to hand you their signed behavior chart, another is saying that their parents want to come in and meet with you, another is trying to tell you what they ate for breakfast, you need to make sure another student has their work packet in their backpack because their parents are picking them up early today, AND you still need to take attendance.
Goodness. I get tired just thinking about it.
I have got some tips for you that I think will make things a little easier on you with your morning routine.
1. Have a solid routine in place.
Give your students something important to do and have visuals.
This can differ in your classroom depending on certain factors. My particular morning routine was for students to: come in and hang up their backpacks, talk and hang out until the tardy bell rang. Once it rang, students put away their easy reader books they took home and picked out new ones. After that, we listened to announcements, and got started with our morning writing practice.
2. Have a “turn in” bin and “papers to see” bin
This helps drastically with everyone coming at you at once in the mornings! Again, make it visual!! The “turn in bin” is for any papers that were sent home to be signed and the “papers to see” is for notes parents sent in, or maybe some drawings your students made.
I like to use these bins and label them!
3. Let them chat!
Sometimes a lot of the chatter that keeps happening throughout the morning is just because they are all so excited to see their friends! Give them a chance to talk and get some of the excitement out of their system!
4. After morning announcements, get them started on an independent task.
My go-to choice was our writing journals. Everything involved was to practice something that was already taught and have it be easy enough that it was an independent activity. This gave me time to check in with students that had to return things, do attendance, and any other last-minute things that had to get done.
5. Give time for tardiness
No, no, I am not saying it’s okay but you know it is bound to happen here or there. It is so hard to get started with your day and have to stop to make sure the student coming in tardy was situated. I think that is why I loved our writing journals so much. It was a very independent activity where students would be engaged, but it also doesn’t set you terribly off track if someone comes in 10-15 minutes late. Having an activity that is like this during your morning routine, can allow you to do all those tasks you need to do and allow for tardy students coming in while keeping the rest of the class on task.
I hope these few tips will help you when it comes to having a solid morning routine in place! Sometimes a simple switch-up of a couple of things is just what is needed for things to go a bit smoother.
If you would like to try these writing pages for yourself, grab the freebie below! I hope it brings some calm and focus to an otherwise hectic part of the day 🙂
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