by Jolanta Maria Nitoslawska-Romer, M.Ed.
International Director of Academic Affairs, BE+Live
Do you or did you write daily short messages to your students? In many classrooms, it’s a custom, and kids look forward to them every day. It’s a great way to greet and connect with your students and also to let them know different things: schedules, surprises, brainteasers, and much more. Now that many of our schools are still closed, morning messages on your screen can be a way of bringing back some of that fun.
You may say that it’s too much work, and you are already swamped. Keeping up with daily Zoom or Seesaw or whatever classes, and then being available for open sessions, planning out lessons and activities, and then contacting parents, and then worrying about your own family is very hard and stressful, to say the least. This blog is not about Mindfulness.. but keep in mind- just a pun- that it really helps. Remember to take a minute, every so often, to take a few deep breaths!
But now, back to Morning Messages!
You probably used chart paper or even your whiteboard to write them, and then, not everyone from your class looked at them or read them, or maybe you all did so together. You knew this was a great way to help the younger students practice functional reading skills and for new readers to build up confidence with predictable patterns and easy sight words. For the fluent readers, messages offered daily practice in reading at a higher level and perhaps even focused on topics from science, social studies or literature. But now, it’s very different. Some of your students log on every day and are ready to go. Other, younger ones, can’t as their parents are also very busy working from home. Your live classes are perhaps being recorded for them to look at later and you are also probably making or using some asynchronous videos.
A morning message to help transition your students from their home environment to school time is important, and even more important now that school time is from home. Morning messages welcome students and help reinforce academic skills. Adding an interactive component helps student engagement and motivation and builds classroom community. So how do you do this when you are more than busy and feel you have to cover the content of the program you are using? Well, it’s all about priorities. When you are clear about the weekly or monthly learning objectives or outcomes, or the Can-Do statements as we have in the BE+Live program, then you can naturally try to include them in a morning message. Don’t feel that the morning message needs to be directly related to today’s lesson; it can be a review, or a teaser, or just a fun thing to do.
To make things easier, and so that you can reuse these morning messages next year or next semester, use Keynote or PowerPoint or Google slides to write your daily messages. Organize them by months ( ie you will then have 20 slides in a file, and they will be easier to retrieve). Set up a theme for each day of the week so that your students
You may also consider adding these elements.
A) A greeting such as Good Morning Super Writers! The greeting can be quite simple as long as it is friendly and tells your students: This message was written especially for you! Come and read it!
B) The date. Write the date at the top of the page or as part of a sentence: “Today is Tuesday, November 7, 2006.” or in Roman numerals, if that’s part of your curriculum.
C) The Body. The body should draw attention to something students will look forward to doing later in the school day or week or even term. Write in a way that is developmentally appropriate for the children you are working with, and ask them to think about or respond in some way to what you’ve written. An interactive component will better engage your students.
Here are some possible daily themes based on BE+Live’s Shaping My Language program, but feel free to adjust these based on your grade levels and on the needs of your students. There are
Tell me about it Mondays: You can use SeeSaw, Canvas, Padlet or other tech tools to have your students respond to any one of your questions about anything, either related to previous activities or a story that was read together or any other topic in your program.
Terrific Tuesdays or (Tuesday Choices ). Ask your students to showcase success stories or things your kids have accomplished, whether for school stuff or at home.
Wonderfully Cryptic Wednesdays. Surprises, surprises! Leave this one open in case you come across something you find interesting. Use Brain Teasers and codes to have the kids figure things out.
True or false Thursdays. Write two sentences, use your BE+Live Awesome Reader or the Learning Log, and have kids tell you which one is true and which one is false. Or have them correct and make false become true, or incorrect become correct.
Figure it out Fridays. Questions that invite children’s creativity or critical thinking skills are usually enthusiastically received. Here would be a way to help students connect literature with personal experience in a simple, effective way
When you are predictable, children feel more secure, and your message then signals to your students that you are ready to start the day. As you have taken the time to write to them daily, it also shows them that morning messages are important and need attention.
Focusing on a single topic is key to coming up with messages that engage students. YOu don’t have to review the daily schedule, instead chose an idea of current interest to your class and get them thinking about it. Look at your curriculum units and topics, listen to your students to get other ideas, and of course, use your readers and Learning Logs too.
There are lots of ideas on the web. Use them, but adapt them to make them uniquely yours. They will be more powerful and engaging if they are aligned with your students’ particular needs and learning outcomes.
Don’t worry if you think your messages aren’t clever, funny, or artistic. Just speak directly to your own students on topics they care about, and this will be the best way to get them interested.
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References and resources
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