Morning Work in the Upper Elementary Grades

As an upper-grade elementary teacher, I always took the morning message concept with a grain of salt. In the fifth and sixth grade, curriculum expectations become larger, students hormones begin to blossom, and the beginning of the day can become horrendously hectic and chaotic at times without some type of engaging and meaningful structure. Obviously, we cannot sit down with a group of fifth grade students and review the weather for the day, and even meaningful work done with journals has proven for many to be less than productive.
Taking a tip of the hat from Mr. Harry Wong, classroom management guru and author of The First Days of School, it doesn't matter your thoughts about morning work, students need to be able to fall into a  routine on a daily basis at the start of each day, a routine that allows the teacher to focus on attendance, lunch counts, notice collections, homework collections, etc. and allows students to be immediately engaged and productive in a meaningful way. My solution to this has been an excellent series available for most elementary grades called Daily Language and Daily Math.
Broken down into weekly mini-lessons, with five problems each day of the week, students are able to review and work through new concepts in math and grammar. The beauty of this is that it introduced a cyclic style of teaching, where students will continually review problems in novel situations to help with retention and recall. To aid in focus and meaningful work ethic, we review the weekly work every Friday morning. Students get a copy of the answer sheet to review, and for every question correct, they earn a dollar in their student checking accounts (for a school store at the end of each month). They are not penalized for work that is attempted, but are penalized for work not even attempted.
I spend about a week at the beginning of the school year showing students how to approach  unknown problems by using their math textbook index to review lesson skills, by looking at previous week's work, by asking their group partners, by using a classroom computer to look up information in "approved" search areas. When I see a number of students struggling, I will stop the class and review it as a whole, as it is likely something they may not have ever seen before.
The first month is usually toughest for students, as they get back into a rhythm, but after a month, they see similar problems they didn't know before, and can now tackle them with ease, building confidence. Students also always hole punch and place completed Daily Language and Math worksheets in their class binders, so they can always refer back to them if they need to remember how to do a problem, since they should always be showing their work, or writing it down as I do it.

What is important to note is that whatever type of morning work you implement, it should be engaging, allow for some level of interaction with classroom resources, and a motivational factor should be in place, especially in the beginning. As the year progresses, the dollar in their checking account is less a factor than their happiness with getting a very difficult problem they used to struggle with correct.