Quick Tips: Morning & Afternoon Routine Reminders

As teachers, we know that students need routines and a certain degree of predictability in order to feel safe in a new classroom and learn what you expect of them. One of the most important things we do to help with this is establish morning and afternoon routines. Not only will students feel less anxiety by knowing exactly what they will do while transitioning to and from school, but teachers will be able to use their time more productively.

Thanks to Pinterest, we are given a variety of ways to display our morning and afternoon routines to help our kiddos remember what to do. Check out some of the awesome examples below:

Mrs. Wills' Kindergarten

I Love Labels

Life is Better Messy Anyway

What I have found works best for me, is to display our routines on PowerPoint slides on the board. 

I love this because:

1. It frees up wall space- I don't know about you, but that is prime real-estate in my room. I don't have a lot of free space and I need every square inch I can get.

2. It's flexible- If our routine calls for something different, like turning in a permission slip or reading instead of morning work, I can change it up quickly without having to repeat myself a billion times.

3. I can personalize- My students love when I personalize the morning routine PPT. They argue over who will be first to enter the room and read the board. 

Some ways I personalize the morning routine are:

   *Add pictures of students or field trips

   *Add pictures of topics we are studying

   *Ask questions or give surveys that require them to write their answer and place it on my desk

   *Tell them what the special of the day will be 

   *Include pictures or stories about my life

Here are some examples of personalized slides from last year. I switched from a to-do list to a letter after they got the main morning "to-do's" down. This helped my student's work on their reading skills. I would usually hide something at the bottom to let me know if they read (ex. put a red crayon on your name tag, quietly write what you would like to do for Fun Friday and place it on my desk). Students who didn't read it were easy to spot and didn't get a vote if there was a survey.

Here are what my basic slides look like at the beginning of the year, before I start getting fancy!

 ...and my afternoon routine

More Quick Tips:

Tackling Unfinished Work

Managing Student Interruptions