In a lot of classrooms the day starts the same way: everyone settles, and for five or ten minutes the class talks about what day it is, what the weather is doing and what is coming up. That stretch of the morning has a name — calendar time, or the morning routine — and it is often the only part of the day when the whole group speaks aloud together, without a book open.
This calendar is built for exactly that: put it on the interactive whiteboard and let a different child fill it in each morning while the rest read the sentence out loud.
Tap Fullscreen to project it on the interactive whiteboard.
How it works in the classroom
The board opens already set to today: it works out the weekday, the month and the season on its own, so the only things really left to choose are the weather and the temperature. Fullscreen makes everything big enough to read from the back of the room.
Underneath the buttons a full sentence writes itself and changes with every choice:
“Today is Thursday, September 10th. It is Autumn. The weather is Rainy and it is Cool.”
The sentence is the point. The aim is not for a child to recognise the word Thursday on its own, but to hear it and say it inside a complete sentence, every day, until the structure sticks. The ES and FR buttons swap the same sentence into Spanish or French, which makes it useful in a bilingual classroom or in a modern languages lesson.
Three ways to get more out of it
- Calendar helper. A different child each morning comes up and presses. Everyone else reads the sentence together. Two minutes.
- Ask first, confirm after. Before touching anything, ask What day is it today? and let them answer. The board is there to confirm, not to give the answer away.
- Dates that are not today. Change the day number and ask what weekday it fell on, or jump forward to the school trip next month. It is calendar arithmetic in disguise.
What gets practised along the way
Days of the week and months of the year, with a teacher’s pronunciation right there. Ordinals —1st, 2nd, 3rd, 21st— which are not learned from a list but from seeing them written a hundred times. Weather and temperature vocabulary, which turns up in one unit of the coursebook and then never comes back. And the It is… / The weather is… frame, which for many seven-year-olds is the first complete sentence they manage on their own.
There is maths in it too. The same routine builds a sense of time: what day was yesterday, how many are left until Friday, which season we are in and why. For the youngest children that is not revision, it is the curriculum.
How the class is doing today
Under the weather there is one last block, How do you feel?, with seven choices: happy, sad, angry, scared, nervous, tired and calm. Tapping one brings up the sentence — “Today I feel happy.” — which also switches language with the ES and FR buttons.
Unlike the rest of the board, this block starts empty every morning: nobody is ticked by default. That is deliberate. Putting a name to what you feel is the first building block of emotional literacy, and a board that already shows an emotion invites children to repeat it without thinking.
Two notes on using it. Keep it voluntary: making a child announce in front of everyone how they are can achieve the opposite of what you are after. And there are no wrong answers: if someone taps “angry” or “scared”, that is useful information to receive, not something to correct in front of the group. Sometimes the best follow-up is simply to check in at break time.
Why project it instead of printing it
A paper calendar has its place — one each, stuck in the exercise book — but it loses what makes this routine work: that it is shared, that it is said out loud, and that it genuinely changes every day. A chart printed on Monday still says Monday on Thursday. This one cannot be fudged.
The board stores nothing and asks for no sign-up: everything is worked out in the browser and nothing leaves the classroom.
Frequently asked questions
What age group is it for?
From Reception through Year 5 (roughly Kindergarten to Grade 4) it works as a daily routine as it stands. With older children it is short for everyday use, but still earns two minutes as a warm-up, especially using the dates-that-are-not-today activity.
Does the weekday update by itself?
Yes. Change the day number or the month and the weekday and season recalculate, with the maximum adjusted to the month — February stops at 28. You can still override the weekday by tapping it, if you would rather have the class guess first.
Why does the season not match mine?
Seasons default to the northern hemisphere. If you are in the southern hemisphere, just tap the right season: the board keeps your choice and will not change it back.
Can it be used in another language?
Yes. The same board is available in Spanish and French, each on its own page, and the EN, ES and FR buttons switch language inside it. Handy in a bilingual setting: the same routine, twice a day, in two languages.
Is there a printable version?
Not yet. If you use it in class and a worksheet for each child would help, say so and we will make one in the same format as the rest of our resources.
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