My students are excited to come into class every morning. They sometimes push by me to try to get into the room!
You can do this in your classroom too! Young Children are curious. They are easily motivated by tweaking their curiosity.
In my room I avoid the boring monotonous morning work. No student is excited to come to class to fill out a worksheet!
(Okay there is always 1 of those!)
* To avoid this dreaded task, I have a classroom visitor who writes a message to my students of each morning. I change the visitor each month of the school year to keep the children’s interest.
* Each personality that comes to the classroom is very distinct. The children love hearing what the visitor has to say every morning.
* Each of the messages have grammatical and punctuation errors. It is the students’ job to correct the mistakes that the visitor has made in their message.
* Children learn grammar, punctuation, and editing skills while correcting the errors. They are able to transfer the skills they acquire in this exercise to editing their own writing.
* To make this the mornings even more enjoyable for children. I use either a stuffed animal, or a paper cut out of the character. This cut out or stuffed animal is hidden in a different place each morning. The children will rush to be the first to find where the classroom visitor is hiding that day.
* You can easily follow this same routine. Write a message on paper, a whiteboard, or on your computer projected onto your interactive whiteboard. Have the students correct the mistakes they find in your note.
* Here is a sample of the morning message I use. Feel free to pattern your message from mine!
