Writing from Adults: Modelling being a Writer

As part of learning about what it means to be a writer, emergent writers need to see adults writing for real reasons.

Morning Message

A good example of this is morning message – where the teacher writes a short note to the class in the morning, writing in front of them and giving them some information about the coming day e.g. “Dear Class, today we will have a visitor. His name is John. From Emily”.

And before we talk more about morning message, please note that writing from adults can include writing anything else that is appropriate to model for the students too – lists of things to remember, notes to people etc.

10 Guidelines

The article linked to above provides 10 guidelines for supporting effective implementation of morning message.  These are:

1. Connect the morning message to what is happening during the day;
2. Construct the message in front of the students (don’t write it ahead of time);
3. The morning message should contain at least one key vocabulary word that the students are learning;
4. The morning message should be written at a level of complexity that is appropriate to the students.  You might start with very simple sentences and gradually make them more complex over the year;
5. The morning message can be generated by the teacher OR by the children with the teacher writing it;
6. During the morning message, teachers should model the thinking process that is a critical part of learning to write;
7. Make links between alphabet instruction and the message.  It can also be used to talk about print skills (see handout below for ideas);
8. Ask questions about the morning message to promote conversation and language development;
9. Morning message can be connected to other classroom activities;
10. Morning message can occur in small or large groups;

I have made these guidelines up into a poster that you can access below:

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As a student’s understanding of function and form changes, we can focus on different aspects of writing during morning message. The handout below links different levels of morning message to different writing groups.

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Morning Message and Print Referencing

Item 7 above mentions doing print referencing as part of morning message. I’ve prepared a handout for this that you can download below:

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Writing from Adults: Other Resources

Writing in our Classrooms Overview Sheet

• Writing in our Classrooms Overview Sheet (updated August 2025)