Morning Routines

As we approach the beginning of the school year we know we will have students who are new to interactive whiteboards, or at least need a refresher course. A great way to get students used to using the board is by making it part of your morning routine. Plus, you're already starting the day out using technology!

Check out Promethean Planet or SMART Exchange and search for "lunch count" or "attendance". You'll find plenty of templates, even by holidays and seasons. You can download them and change them as you'd like. An added organizational bonus: Use "save as" to save each lunch count/attendance to a special folder and refer back to it if you can't remember when a student was absent or how many students ordered pizza.

You can also change these templates around to use them as a poll for anything from gauging student interest to asking students to predict the weather or what will happen next in the book you are reading. You could have students use their own names or simply use shapes or icons to make the voting anonymous. There are also a few morning calendar routines on the sites, but you may want to use them as a jumping off point to creating your own.