Teacher-directed morning messages are written by the teacher. Teachers use the message to focus on specific reading and writing skills. Early in grade one, the message can reinforce concepts about print, such as reading left to right and top to bottom. Teachers can model the use of spaces between words and simple punctuation like periods and capital letters. The morning message is an opportunity for teachers to model correct spelling and to introduce high-frequency words such as "the" and "she." Teachers can involve pupils in the morning message with activities such as asking them to circle capital letters, highlight certain words or correct purposely written mistakes. Teachers can also put sticky notes over the first letters in words and ask pupils to determine what the letters should be.
As first-graders develop their literacy skills, teachers can introduce shared writing during the morning message. In this activity, teachers compose part of the message and ask pupils to complete it. Teachers can leave blanks in their messages and ask pupils to fill in the missing letters, words or punctuation. Involve the whole class by providing each pupil with a whiteboard and marker to write down the missing information. Teachers can also ask pupils to generate ideas for the morning message, such as a greeting to use at the beginning of a friendly letter.
Pupil-created morning messages give first-graders the opportunity to generate ideas for the morning messages and write them independently. Teachers select one or two pupils to write the message each day. This should be done once pupils have seen many morning messages modeled by the teacher and have the skills to write independently. Pupils have the opportunity to practice spelling, the use of punctuation and writing complete sentences. They also practice reading skills, as they read their messages aloud to their classmates. Teachers can involve the rest of the class by asking them to help edit the morning messages.