You all know we love routines and procedures, but one thing we might love more, which helps solidify your morning routine, is incorporating morning work. If you’ve followed us for a long time, you know that our morning work is something we’re known for and have spent a lot of years perfecting and feel proud of. So whether you’re new to the idea of morning work or have been using it for years, we’re sharing our tips on how to maximize using morning work in your classroom this year.

For all the resources mentioned in this episode, head to the show notes:

https://www.secondstorywindow.net/podcast/morning-work

Resources:

• Morning Work Bundle
• Things My Students Said Journal
• Hello Stranger by Katherine Center
• Connect with us on Instagram @2ndstorywindow.
• Shop our teacher-approved resources.
• Join our Facebook group, Teacher Approved
• Leave your review on Apple Podcasts!

Mentioned in this episode:

Do you have a question or concern that could use a teacher-approved solution? We'd love to answer your question on the podcast! Submit your question to hello@secondstorywindow.net and put "podcast question" in your subject line.

Emily

Hey there, thanks for joining us today. In today's episode, we're talking about how to introduce morning work at the start of the year, and sharing a teacher approved tip for preparing for a substitute teacher.

Heidi

We start our episodes with a morning message just like we used to do at morning meeting in our classrooms. This week's morning message is do you have any end of summer rituals or celebrations that you do for yourself before transitioning back into school mode? Emily, what about you?

Emily

Well, I have some back to school traditions that I do with my kids. But I actually think an end a summer ritual or closing ceremony would be a good idea. But I got nothing. So I'll let you know if I do think of something. I like the idea of it. But no, I don't really have anything.

Heidi

I like that idea of like closing the door on summer before you start back to school. You're always in a time crunch this time of year. Truly. How about you? Yeah. Which is why I don't have anything like that because I'm just stumbling through at this point every year. So I get to the middle of September and wonder what happened to August. You know, what are you gonna do?

Emily

Maybe we'll be better next year. We do have some responses from our community. Bill said he gets a massage. Way to go Bill. Julie said she details her car so it's nice and clean for her commute. Oh, I love that idea. Tonya says she squeezes in a vacation. Oh, that's awesome. Clara said that she gets a haircut and a few new clothing items to give her some motivation. That's fun. Jennifer goes to the beach and just relaxes. Nice.

Emily

Deborah said I go see lighthouses along the western side of the state. Oh, that's cool. Corinne said I pick a few new songs for a playlist I listened to at school. Well, I love that. I know. That's a really cute idea. And Chris said, my husband and I run away somewhere anywhere the week before school starts. I spend most of the summer working on this for school or that for school. So he makes sure I take a break before returning. And Haley said she does a spa day. We'd love to have you join the conversation over in our teacher approved Facebook group.

Emily

If you came to know Heidi and me before finding this podcast, it's likely that you know us for our morning work.

Heidi

We did not set out to be the morning work people. But that's where we have ended up and we are not mad about it.

Emily

No. So to set the stage of how we ended up here, you need to hop in your time machine and travel back with us 20 years ago.

Heidi

Emily

An overhead projector was that? Except I know what that is because I had one. Who wouldn't want to use their time machine to go visit a faculty meeting though. So let's go.

Heidi

Well, it was a big moment for me. I had never heard of spiral review before.

Emily

And little did you know how that moment would change your future. In case it's a new idea to you as well, spiral review means that you repeatedly review content with your students, so they don't have a chance to completely forget it.

Heidi

But every time you review it, you go a little deeper like you're descending a spiral. Otherwise, it would just be a circular review. We talked more about spiral review in Episode 76 if you want some more information on that.

Emily

So let's say you start your math lesson each day with a review question. One day, it's geometry, then place value the next day. Even if you're in the middle of your fractions unit, you're pulling in these questions from other parts of your curriculum to help break that learn it test it forget it cycle that we all know so well.

Heidi

So after that particular faculty meeting, not only did I see the benefits of incorporating spiral review into my schedule, I also realized it could help solve another problem.

Heidi

So like a lot of teachers probably I had been taught that part of any effective morning routine was having a predictable assignment for the kids to work on when they arrive. But whoever taught me about this morning assignment had not bothered to explain what that assignment should be.

Heidi

Emily

And overall, that was probably fine. But I can see that there were probably a few problems with that. First, worksheet styles vary, not just from day to day, but even within the same book, that would make it hard for kids to understand how to complete it independently.

Heidi

Yeah, that was actually a real problem. But at first, I was proud of the variety of work I was offering. I thought it would keep the kids from getting bored, because as we know, bored kids cause problems.

Heidi

But what turned out to happen was that my high kids could figure it out. But the rest of my class, you know, the kids who actually needed the extra practice, were either doing nothing while they waited for me to get to them, or they assumed they knew what to do and did it wrong. In that case, it just wasn't any more beneficial than it was for the kids who did nothing.

Emily

Yeah, that definitely doesn't sound like a good use of time. Plus, the fact that you were kind of haphazardly pulling worksheets means the kids weren't necessarily getting the practice with topics that needed the most attention.

Heidi

Yeah, it definitely wasn't an effective system, I do not recommend zero stars. And even at the time, I didn't love it. But I continued this way through my second year of teaching, because I didn't know what else to do. But hearing about spiral review really got my wheels turning. I realized it was a way to fit in targeted practice, as well as a way to make my morning routine more effective.

Emily

So hey, sometimes you do get good information at faculty meetings.

Heidi

I think this is the exception to that rule. But in this case, it was a very good exception. I decided to make a daily spiral review page for my second graders. I started by identifying what my kids struggled with the most on those fun end of year tests. And I asked the third grade teachers what they wish their students came to them already knowing. And then I started trying to piece it all together. Sounds so simple.

Emily

And this morning work has been through many, many phases over the years. And if you happen to be an early adopter of our morning work, you may remember when we used to have every fifth day of the morning work was a reading comprehension passage instead of a review page. And that was a result of this early stage, the kids were consistently struggling with reading comprehension on the end of year test. So it made sense to try and practice the skill all year long.

Heidi

Yeah, it seemed like a good idea in my head, but it wasn't very practical. In real life, reading passages just took so much less time to complete than the regular review pages. And then that just threw off the whole morning routine. So the passages eventually went out the window.

Heidi

But otherwise, the general structure has stayed the same for 20 years. I planned it out in 10 day cycles. The standards covered on day one are the same standards covered on day 11, day 21 day 31. You get the idea. But every time we revisit those standards, the questions are taking us a little bit deeper.

Emily

But just because the standard is on day one doesn't mean it won't show up on other days, there's a lot of variation. Some standards are so important, they're covered every day. And some standards might only get visited every 10 days.

Heidi

So I kind of picture it, like each different standard is a gear and like clockwork of this whole system. Some gears are big so it takes 10 days for them to come fully back around: objectives like alphabetizing synonyms and measurement, those are our big gears. We keep them in the rotation, because they're important, but they aren't vital.

Heidi

And then there are these tiny gears that rotate much quicker. Second grade has placed value questions every day, because it's so important. And third grade is the same with multiplication and division questions. And everything else rotates somewhere in between.

Emily

Yeah, it just doesn't make sense to give every standard the same weight in your planning when they don't carry the same importance.

Heidi

And that is why it's so much work to make one of these.

Emily

I mean that is the understatement of the century. These are so much work.

Heidi

But a review routine only has value if it impacts the most important learning. So a standard might show up weekly, or every other day, or four times a week or once a week or once every two weeks, or once a week for a term. There are a lot of moving pieces here.

Emily

But I do think that that is the secret sauce of our morning work and why so many teachers love it. Because the same question types are showing up repeatedly, kids quickly learn how to do it independently. But since we've accounted for the importance of each standard, this review time isn't just busy time it's effective time

Heidi

And that's definitely how it was in my class. Morning work time quickly became the hinge point of our schedule. It allowed us to open the door to a calm, productive, meaningful day.

Emily

And I found the same thing to be true in my classroom. So you had already been using morning work for a while before I started teaching, so I was able to hit the ground running. Honestly, I feel a little spoiled that I never had to struggle trying to figure out my morning routine because Heidi gave me such a leg up by teaching me her morning routine.

Heidi

Well, I was happy to have something I could pass on and spare you some headaches.

Emily

And it was also helpful that you had fine tuned your morning work a bit at that point. So it was easy to add it to my day, knowing that a lot of the kinks had been worked out.

Emily

And my team immediately jumped on board with ordering the workbooks from the district print shop for our whole grade level. And so I converted my school over to it immediately. And I loved the morning work from the very start because it was just the perfect start to our day.

Heidi

Emily

Not to mention all the iterations of those days.

Heidi

I found a system that worked almost effortlessly for me.

Emily

All right, so give us your top tips for using morning work.

Heidi

So I think the first thing is to remember that morning work has to be taught, oh yes, it is designed for students to complete independently, but they can't start it independence, you have to use that gradual release of responsibility.

Emily

Mm hmm. We occasionally hear from a teacher who is upset because they handed out a morning work page and their students needed help. But just like you have to teach kids how to line up before they can do it right, you have to teach them how to do morning work.

Emily

Definitely expect that at the beginning, you're going to be doing a lot of scaffolding for your students while they learn how to do this activity successfully on their own.

Heidi

But for sure the goal is to get them up to speed independently as soon as possible. And that's why I always started with morning work on the first day of school. I waited till the afternoon of the first day, it wasn't the first thing we did. And then once I had introduced pencils, then we worked through our morning work page question by question as a whole class.

Emily

I love doing it this way when you first introduce it, because it's a great opportunity to walk them through the process in a low stress way. And it gives you the opportunity to set the standards of what you expect from them in their responses.

Heidi

Plus, it is a way to prepare them for what to expect the next day. Because I have the years morning work already printed and bound, we could just turn to the second page and talk about the questions the kids might have for tomorrow morning.

Emily

And if you don't have your morning work printed that far in advance, you could easily project day two and discuss the questions with your class on your smartboard. That way, the kids will come in feeling more comfortable because they know what's expected of them when they arrive. And they'll be more successful at their first solo attempt because you gave them some guidance in advance.

Heidi

And when the bell rang on the morning of the second day, I reminded the kids to get out their books and start on page two, it was on the board. But you know, it needs a little nudge at the beginning. If they came to something they didn't understand, I told them to just skip it and that I would help with any questions after announcements.

Emily

So that gave them a little nudge to try it on their own. But no one was left panicking if they had questions.

Heidi

Yeah. And you know, we basically worked through it question by question that second morning as well. The problem with that, of course is that morning work time is when I have important stuff to do.

Heidi

So that meant the kids spent most of the second day's allotted morning work time doing the fast finisher, which in my class was reading from the book tubs at their desks, while I hurry to send in my attendance.

Emily

And that's totally okay. The first few days will mostly just be establishing the routine of morning work, it will probably take a couple of days of working through it together before the kids feel comfortable working through the whole page independently.

Emily

But after the first week, they'll start to recognize familiar types of questions and they'll get in the groove of it. Our morning work utilizes a repeated style questions intentionally designed to help build this independence.

Heidi

And when we were planning, I really tried to be generous with the pacing of the content. I wanted to avoid having students practice standards they may not have covered yet. But you know, still there were occasions when we ran into that. So if there's a geometry question every week, but my geometry unit isn't till March, we might get a little bit ahead of ourselves sometimes.

Emily

And that's bound to happen from time to time. There's just no way to account for every teacher's pacing guide. Anytime I did run into that with my morning work, I just used that question as front loading content for the future. It's a good opportunity to have a discussion and it happens so rarely, it didn't really impact my student's ability to complete their work.

Heidi

Yeah, they really do. catch onto this quickly. One thing that really helped my students get the hang of things was correcting the page together each day. When the kids finished working on their page for the day, they were supposed to get out of crayon, and then tuck that into their book as a bookmark and close the book so that their neighbors wouldn't copy their page.

Heidi

And when it was time to correct, everyone could easily open to the right page. And then they were supposed to hold up their crayon as a signal to me that they were ready to go.

Emily

I can see them with their little crayons in the air right now. I found that correcting with a crayon worked really well. It sent the message that mistakes are expected and when they happen, we fix them and we learn from them.

Emily

We could have done the same thing with a pencil. But I liked that the crayon gave me an easy way to see if someone was making a lot of errors, and might need some extra support. If they use a pencil, they can erase their mistakes, and then you won't be able to see as clearly where they struggled.

Heidi

Now, you know, correcting it as a class does take some extra time. But I think it's what makes this spiral review so powerful. Kids are getting immediate feedback on whether or not they understand a topic. It's an integral part of the learning experience.

Emily

Yeah, in my mind, correcting your morning work as a class is non negotiable. If the kids are practicing incorrectly, then this is a pointless activity. And yes, you could collect each page, correct it and hand it back.

Emily

But that's way less effective than working through it together. First of all, that's tons of extra work for you. And second of all, the kids aren't getting the immediate feedback that benefits them much more.

Heidi

Right. So for example, if a kid reads a clock and says it's 3:45, but it's really 2:45 and they get their paper marked wrong, they learn they got it wrong. But if you come to that question, as a class, you have a teachable moment.

Heidi

So did any of you think that clock said 345 instead of 245? That is so tricky, because it looks like the our hand is pointing to the three already. But remember, we don't start at three o'clock until the hour hand is in the middle of the three. Right there, you've helped underscore the idea that they need to pay attention to that tricky hour hands.

Emily

And just don't underestimate the power of those small teachable moments that will rise, they can be so impactful on your student learning.

Heidi

At the first of the school year, like everything else you have to do. Correcting morning work is a slow process, because you have to go through in detail. But after a couple of weeks, you can zip through it.

Heidi

So on a normal day with my second graders, we would talk about the sentences at the top of the page, I'd quickly give the answers to the rest of the questions. And then I like to have a few students share their strategies for the different ways that they solve the word problem.

Heidi

And if anything was tricky on the page, like that time question, we might spend some time discussing it. But otherwise, I really tried to keep things hopping.

Emily

And on those days when you're really strapped for time, you can just put the answers on the board and have the kids correct it. It's okay if you don't have time to discuss it every single day. What you do most days matters more than what you do some days, so just aim to do the correct thing together more days than not.

Heidi

Plus, creating it as a class means it is one less thing for you to grade.

Emily

Yes. Do not grade morning work guys. Don't just don't you got enough to do.

Heidi

If you absolutely have to take a grade for it, maybe switch to marking it as just complete or incomplete. If they completed it they get full points. If not, you could knock down their score however much you need to.

Emily

The purpose of morning work for students is to practice retrieving previously taught information. So grading them on that practice isn't going to make them any more successful but it will be a lot more work for you. The goal of morning work for the teacher is to make your life easier, so let it make your life easier.

Heidi

We would love to hear your tips for how you use morning work in your classroom. Come join the conversation in our teacher approved Facebook group.

Emily

Now let's talk about this week's teacher approved tip. Each week we leave you with a small actionable tip that you can apply in your classroom today. This week's teacher approved tip is teach students your expectations for a substitute before you have a substitute. So can you tell us about that, Heidi?

Heidi

Sure. So at the beginning of the year, right, we are teaching all the things: where to go in the lunchroom, how to clean up at the end of the day, when to sharpen a pencil, you know how that list goes.

Heidi

But after we've taught our frequently used procedures and expectations, we need to teach what happens with our less common procedures. Things like carrying a chair to an assembly what to do in an emergency drill, how to put up the flag in the morning. There are lots of these infrequent events that have specific steps to follow.

Heidi

And if you are waiting till it's time for an assembly before you teach your kids how the school expects you to carry your chairs. You are in for a huge headache. Procedures work best when we teach them before we need to use them. But one thing we sometimes forget to prepare students for is what to do when there's a sub.

Heidi

Obviously, it would be so nice if your kids just came to class and had a normal school day, even if they have a new teacher. But I've not found that kids actually work that way, unfortunately, sadly, and things will go smoother for everyone. If you can prepare your students ahead of time.

Emily

You might have the luxury of knowing you have a training on the 20th. So on the 19th, you can prepare your kids for what to expect the next day. But as you know, that's not how it always works when you need time off.

Heidi

Yeah, you're pretty much guaranteed at least one emergency sub day during the school year. So it's definitely better for everyone to take the bull by the horns here.

Heidi

You can start by being very clear about your expectations for your students behavior anytime you have a substitute, or maybe you call them a guest teacher.

Emily

I think it's helpful to leave a special reward system since a sub won't be familiar with your behavior plan. If you do something similar, it's smart to explain that to your class ahead of time.

Heidi

Really, the more you can ease the surprise around what happens with a substitute, the smoother, everyone's day will go.

Emily

And you'll have fewer messes to clean up when you return.

Heidi

So really that's a win for everyone.

Heidi

To wrap up the show, we are sharing what we're giving extra credit to this week. Emily what gets your extra credit?

Emily

I'm giving extra credit to the book Hello Stranger by Katherine Center. This story is about portrait artists Sadie who ends up in a real pickle when she develops a case of probably temporary fingers crossed faith blind. And that's a bit of a problem for a portrait artist. As you can imagine.

Emily

I really liked this unique premise. And it's full of all the funny scenarios you would expect from someone who can't really see faces or recognize people. It's a light hearted rom com read but in the best way. I highly recommend it if you like some light reading.

Heidi

I could use a light book right now.

Emily

It's on Scribd. I was listening to it.

Heidi

Oh, that's fun. I love and Katherine Center has been a winner.

Emily

So yeah. What are you giving extra credit to?

Heidi

Well, my extra credit goes to a notebook that I just happen to stumble across called Things My Students Said. I know my students were always saying just hilarious things probably like your students. And then you know, you'd share them in the faculty room and everyone would laugh and then I just forget about them.

Heidi

But having a dedicated place to record them would have been so handy. And I have already ordered a copy of this for my neighbor, who will be graduating in education in the spring. I'm already stocking up on all the things she'll need.

Emily

I was just thinking that would be such a good gift for a new teacher.

Heidi

Or even a not so new teacher. Yeah. So we'll put a link in the show notes to the one I bought. It's not anything particularly special. There were a bunch on Amazon. And they're also similar ones I found on Etsy. But most of those had swear words on the cover. So I guess know your audience for that one.

Emily

Yeah. And where you might leave this book. That might matter.

Heidi

So that's it for today's episode. Make a plan for your morning work and don't forget our teacher approved tip to teach your sub expectations before you have a sub.