Morning work for 4th graders is essential for many reasons, but the top reason on my list is classroom management! One of the best lessons I learned for classroom management was to have something for my students to do right away when they arrived in the morning. Let’s face it, a 4th grader with extra time on his/her hands is a 4th grader that will be creative enough to fill that time…sometimes not so productively!
Morning work has saved many 4th graders from losing privileges and it has saved my sanity as well. A good-old-fashioned language arts worksheet is all you need to have morning work for 4th graders ready to go. As always, adding some variety to how you use that language arts worksheet is the key to keeping kids engaged. Since I’m sharing 5 different ways to do morning work for 4th graders, you’ll have one idea for each day of the week!
Before I share a few of my favorite ideas for turning a language arts worksheet into morning work for 4th graders, I have to share my favorite worksheet for the job…a daily language review, or spiral review, that covers several skills over the course of the week.
You can use this free download of a week of daily language reviews for 4th graders right here.
If you utilize stations for morning work, you can use your language arts worksheet at the ELAR station. Just print a copy of the language arts worksheet for the day and place it at your ELAR station along with a stack of notecards. As students visit that station, have them fill in the answers on a notecard and place the finished notecard on their desk. Once the bell rings, do a quick review of the language arts worksheet with the whole class and have the students check their own work. If you have a technology station you can use a digital version of the daily language reviews.
If you’re familiar with exit tickets, flip that idea around and use entry tickets. As you greet your students in the morning, pass out the entry ticket for the day. Since daily language review worksheets are great for quick assessments to gauge student understanding with just a few questions, you’ll easily be able to see where students are gaining mastery and where you could implement intervention if needed before moving on to the next language arts topic.
Write a fun message across the top of the language arts worksheet. Then, project the worksheet under your document camera your morning greeting on your smart board to engage students in language arts thinking first thing in the morning. Students can respond to your message by writing their own across the top of their worksheet before starting the “work” part of morning work.
Print a language arts worksheet for each group you have in the classroom. As students arrive, have them gather with others in their group to complete the morning work using whichever cooperative learning structure you chose for the day. Some great cooperative learning structures for morning work for 4th graders are all-write-roundtable, sage-and-scribe, rally-robin, or find-someone-who. You could have them use the cooperative learning structure to just talk through the questions so they are ready to complete the assignment independently later that day, or have them complete the language arts worksheet right then to be turned in.
This one is sure to start some language arts thinking and talking. Before the students arrive, answer all the questions on the language arts worksheet. Then, use a marker to black out the questions. Project the completed and blacked-out worksheet on the board. Next, have your students write down what they think the questions were. Give bonus points for creativity and enjoy the conversations that take place as you reveal the original questions after morning work time comes to a close.
However you decide to design morning work for 4th graders, there are two keys to success. One, incorporate some time for them to be social with one another. Two, give them some sort of activity to activate their brain activity. As rising tweens, peer interaction is increasingly important. They also aren’t bouncing out of bed ready to take action anymore. Some bite-sized language arts practice for morning work builds confidence in reading and writing skills. It makes the work feel doable, so they are ready to conquer the rest of the challenges of the day!
As teachers, we need morning work to be easy as well, so you can put prepping morning work on autopilot with a year’s worth of daily language review worksheets! Having a no-prep language morning work resource is a huge time saver. Grab your’s today
Don’t miss out on other great resources and ideas. Visit the ELAR page.