5 POWERFUL Interactive Morning Message Activities Increase Engagement

Have you used Morning Message with your students?  I love using Morning Message because it can support so many foundational literacy skills: 

• Tracking Print to Reinforce Directionality
• Highlighting Specific Letters and Words
• Emphasizing Spaces Between Words
• Modeling Writing and Sentence Structure
• Adding Predictable Sentences for Participation

I also love using interactive Morning Message activities to teach or highlight the literacy skills within each Morning Message. Interactive morning message activities make Morning Messages purposeful, engaging and fun!  Here are some of my favorites:

Puppets Increase Engagement

After teaching skills within our Morning Message, I introduced our ‘Morning Message Puppet’, Mr. Wiggles, to read the message—incorrectly!

This silly puppet made silly mistakes, and the students clamored to read the message correctly to teach Mr. Wiggles how to read. If the print said, “We saw goats at the farm.”  Mr. Wiggles might read it as, “I saw boats on the farm.” My class loved our goofy purple puppet whose voice and mistakes always made them giggle.

After students corrected Mr. Wiggles’ mistakes, I would ask, “How did you know?” Reflecting enabled children to solidify their conceptions and it guided my next steps for our future Morning Message instruction and activities.

Adding Voices to Morning Message

Adding voices to our Morning Message was always a hit! Voices were engaging and fun—they definitely encouraged re-reading. And the more times we re-read a message, the more I could discover details about my children’s attention to print, their use of foundational skills, and I could anticipate what to add as our next steps. i.e. Adding explicit teaching of specific heart words in our message.

Building Community with Names

My children were especially excited to see whose name would be written in our Morning Message each day. When drawing a child’s name out we would say the chant, Who’s it Going to Be? I would expose the name letter by letter for the children to figure out our helper’s name. When we knew the helper’s name they would come write it on our Morning Message. My children loved learning to read each other’s names!

I incorporated student names in our interactive Morning Message activities to ensure our text was authentic and meaningful. My children looked forward each day to reading and finding out who my helper for the day would be! This simple touch of including names as one of our interactive Morning Message activities fostered classroom connections and engagement.  

Writing Names – Supports Interactive Morning Message Activities

Focusing on name writing practice was also included during our interactive Morning Message activities.  Children practiced name writing by answering a ‘Would You Rather’ question or a ‘Survey’ question.  Two or three times a week, children would sign their names to choose their answer to our questions. Using smelly markers or different writing tools made this activity even more exciting for my children! I also double-dipped. I would take a weekly photo of their hand-written names and I used it to create a powerful record of name writing growth over time. 

Let’s Write Together – Create Little Books!

Reading decodable text is extremely important for beginning readers when they are first learning to read. Equally important is writing (encoding) decodable text. As part of our interactive Morning Message activities we wrote decodable text together.  As a class we decoded a rime, such as ‘at’, and then children added onsets to create words.  When our list had two or more ‘at’ rime words, children helped write (encode) a sentence using at least one word from our list. Sentences were often similar to the following: The cat is my pet. The rat is my pet. Children used these sentences to fill little quarter page booklets. This became one of our favorite interactive Morning Message activities.

Sharing the Pen – Growing Writer

When appropriate, children shared the pen and helped write sections of our Morning Message. This activity was a win-win as it provided engagement as well as opportunities to showcase – decoding, encoding, rhyming, sight words, and fluency practice!  It also provided exposure to learn about writing conventions, grammar, punctuation, capitalization and spacing! 

When children’s names were included and especially when they wrote them, this interactive Morning Message activity provided joy and supported our literacy learning.

* When I used an interactive board, I printed a copy for the students to reread, illustrate and take home. A copy also went into our Morning Message notebook. Children read and reread our Morning Messages during book time and during our Literacy Centers

Bringing it All Together –The Magic of Morning Message

There’s something really special about starting the day with Morning Message. These interactive activities bring so much joy to a classroom while gently building important literacy skills. From giggling with a silly puppet to cheering for friends when their names appear, each message becomes a meaningful moment shared together. And the best part? Children are reading, writing, and growing, all while having fun! When Morning Message is interactive and purposeful, it creates a warm, connected classroom where every child feels valued and excited to learn.
Pick an idea that fits your style and give it a whirl—it’s a fun way to start the day!

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