You are running around the classroom trying to get everything ready for the day while you listen to a student’s story about his/her birthday party. The bell rings and you realize that you need a few more minutes. Or, maybe you’re ready to go but your students are literally dragging themselves into the classroom and it’s not a case of the Mondays. What do you do to get students motivated and ready for the day? Getting students ready to learn in the morning can be a little bit rough, but by getting some morning motivation, your students will be ready to rock it!
#1 Activate Your Mind
A great way to start your day is with an activity that corresponds with what you are going to be teaching right away in 
the morning. Whether you are working on capital letters, ELA, or Math getting your students in the mindset for learning is vital to success. In addition to getting them thinking about a particular subject, you can use fun activities to get them motivated to learn.
An activity should be something students are capable of working on independently. It should also be something that can be one in a reasonable amount of time. You don’t want to spend the whole morning working on a starter activity unless it is something that can be stretched over a few days. If you are doing an activity over the course of a few days, make sure you are very explicit with your instructions.
#2 Observation Station
If you’re starting with science and you have a cool project that you’re working on in class, observing the science station might be the best way to start the day. Getting your students involved in their experiments is so beneficial when it comes to critical thinking, predicting, and more! If you have a class experiment that correlates with what you are learning in science, you can have your students go look at the object and start writing in their science journal about:
- What they see. This is a great place to talk about comparing and contrasting from one day to the next.
- What they think will happen next. This promotes re-reading your past notes (a great study skill for the future) and helps students make predictions.
If you are looking for fun science activities to do with your students, you can find them here.
#3 Job Opportunities
Another way to get your students motivated for the day is by getting them some responsibility. If you have a science project going on that is space limited this is a great way to occupy some students. When you provide students with a “job opportunity” you put them in charge of something in the classroom. This can be anything from taking attendance to watering the class plant or feeding a gerbil. Everyone in class should get a job opportunity throughout the year and it should be as equal as possible. Giving students a job opportunity is a great way to boost morning motivation because students like being helpful. No matter how “small” the job is, the student completing that task that day/week will feel like vital part of the classroom and therefore be more motivated to learn. In addition, this teaches your students some killer character skills.
#4 Station Destination
Motivating students in the morning can be rough, but if you utilize stations to reactivate (coming soon to a bullet point near you) it can be very motivating. Your stations can be anything from:
- MobyMax time
- Boom Decks
- Activities
These stations can rotate every day for students. So for example, student groups 1 and 2 work on MobyMax while groups 3 and 4 work on Boom Decks, and groups 5 and 6 work on desk activities on Monday then they rotate in some way. This gets students exposed to similar materials in a variety of ways and helps them get ready for the day.
#5 Re-Activate
Finally, a great way to get some morning motivation for your students is by reactivating knowledge they have previously learning. You can do this through a variety of measures be it:
- A group game
- Individual games
- Stations
- Activities
Anything can be used to reactivate prior knowledge. If you are starting something new in math, and a skill that was a unit ago is needed, take the morning to help students reactivate their brains and get them motivated to learn how to use a past skill to create a new skill.
The Why:
Ok so now you know how to motivate your students in the morning and even have some sweet resources to do it, why should I? One of the biggest time sucks that is totally necessary for your day is the buy in. Your students need to buy into the fact that what you are talking about is important. If you can get the buy in while you are taking attendance in the morning, why not!? Using activities, observations, stations, and recall work to get your students ready for the day is a great way to get your students motivated for a day full of learning! If you need to find some great activities to turn the morning from a drag to motivation station, check out Stop and Smell the Crayons for Year Long Bundles!
