Are you in a morning message writing rut? About halfway through the year, it can start getting tricky to keep morning messages fresh and fun. Following a set routine can help keep those morning message ideas coming. These seven tips will help get those creative writing juices flowing.
Use the Same Four Elements Each Day
Morning messages are much easier to write when you have an outline. Try writing your messages with the same four elements each time. Sticking to this will help you easily generate morning message ideas.
1. Date
Start with the day’s date, including the day of the week. This helps students get situated and allows them to check in with the days schedule (especially if your schedule changes depending on the day of the week).
2. Greeting
This part is simple. Greet your students in a different way. Great creative! This is a fun way to keep your morning messages light-hearted. You can keep a list on hand and just “pop them in” in a rotation. Here are some ideas:
- Hi friends!
- Welcome learners!
- Hello determined third graders!
- Welcome to ____ (day of the week)!
- Dear Geologists,
- Happy (day of the week)!
- Welcome scholars!
- Good morning sweet students,
- Greetings responsible students,
3. Morning Message Focus or Interactive
It’s up to you if you want to incorporate curriculum into this part of your morning message. Some teachers like to use this part of their message to review concepts in ELA, Math, Science, Social Studies, etc. This part of your morning message can also incorporate Social Emotional Learning or be a time to review expectations. Here are some ideas:
- If one fifth of your classmates were absent, how many of your classmates would be absent? Write your answer on the chart below.
- What is your favourite part of our school? Write it below.
- What is something you will do to make today the best it can be? Write it below.
- We’ve been reading (book title). Write a character trait below that describes (main character).
4. News
This is a great section to notify students of any schedule changes, special events, or things to look forward to in the day or week ahead. You can also include important directions for your morning routine in this section. Below are some morning message ideas for news you might share:
- Great job on earning reward time! We will have our reward this afternoon at the end of the day.
- Please put your permission forms in the pink bin on my desk.
- We are starting our new unit in Science this week. It’s all about building with and testing different materials. We will have so much fun! I’m looking forward to it.
Use Weekly Morning Message Plan
To save time when planning out morning messages and to help generate morning message ideas, use a weekly plan or rotation of topics. Once you narrow down 5 topics you want to cover in morning messages over the course of the week, you can base your messages on those topics. Here’s a sample outline of topics on each day of the week:
- Monday – Community Building
- Tuesday – English Language Arts
- Wednesday – Math
- Thursday – Science or Social Studies
- Friday – Week Wrap Up & Reflection
Go Digital
Going digital can help save time writing morning messages. You can copy paste elements from your old messages to reuse them (like your greetings). Writing digital morning messages is also great for adding a level of interest to your morning messages. There are two ways I like to “level up” my morning messages.
1. GIFs
I LOVE adding GIFs from giphy.com in my morning messages. It doesn’t take long and my students get such a kick out of them! I find one that relates with something in the morning message and pop it in my morning meeting slides.
2. Themed Templates
I use morning meeting themed slides each day. The theme changes each month so it add a level of interest and is eye catching. It easy for me to be able to type in the message and I display the slides on my promethean board so that students can do the interactive piece on the promethean board itself or they answer on the white board beside it.
NO MORE PLANNING FOR MORNING MEETING
I love morning meeting. I think it’s my favourite time of day, although Daily 5 is a close second.
There’s only one part of morning meeting that I don’t like… can you guess?
It’s the planning!
In order to keep it fresh and engaging, I feel like I’m forever on the hunt for new ideas for morning meeting. It takes some serious time to plan all four parts and I can better use that time on the weekends for sipping coffee and reading books.
SO, I came up with a solution.
Every month, I plan your morning meetings FOR you.
I create themed morning meeting slides for elementary teachers. In these slides, the greeting, sharing and group activity is already planned for you. All that’s left for you to do is to type in your morning message.
If you want to try two weeks of my morning meeting slides for free, click here to download the freebie!
If you want to check out the growing bundle, click on the thumbnail below. Trust me, I’m already jealous of the time you’ll be freeing up!
Further Reading
If you enjoyed this blog post, check out my other blog posts with morning meeting ideas:
