Morning Message

Every morning, I start my morning meeting by writing a morning message. Normally I'll let the kids know what we're doing that day or week. I'll start it with a greeting in a foreign language, normally followed by a cute name for the students using alliteration. At the very end I'll write a yes or no question. I read it to the students to model and go over any tricky words, then have the kids read it by themselves with LOTS of expression! For every capital letter, they do firework flashes with their hands, every comma they click their tongue and make a hooking motion with a finger, every period is one clap, exclamation point is two claps, and for a question mark, the students raise their shoulders and hands as if saying, "I don't know." A chosen student will ask the rest of the class the question, take a poll, and write the numbers by practicing writing tally marks. Another student will correct any misspelled words, another uses editing marks to underline capital letters and punctuation marks.

Normally I write on chart paper, and once I've used all the pages I'll put it in the Brain Bags Center so the kids can read it. However, I've run out of chart paper. But, the kids love using the dry erase markers on my teacher board because they feel special like the teacher!