The TikTok-ificaiton of the Elementary Morning News

I am going to be in charge of the morning news show next year. I want it to be,

• School Centered
• Student Centered
• Shorter
• Engaging and Remarkable

So far I have a Not-Todo list

• No anchor
• No weather, no Lunch
• Not taking the entire time

I don’t think I need anchors. TikTok does not have people introducing and curating your experience. By using FlipGrid we are making the entire school the news anchors. Instead of having a news crew remind everyone that tomorrow is SCA Pajama Day, we should have someone from the SCA record a short video explaining Pajama Day.

No weather for the day. If it is part of your academics, teachers should do it on their own. No lunch menu, only half the school eats lunch and knowing todays lunch will not change whether you eat lunch that day or not.

For content, the state of Virginia only requires

1. Pledge
2. Minute (not moment) of Silence

What if we organized it this way

• Pledge
• Content
• Moment of Silence

Teacher says, “ok, time for the pledge. They click the button and play full screen. We have a 5 second intro, just to get focused, then have a student ask everyone to stand and say the pledge. Then invite everyone to sit.

We go right into some content blocks. Short. Multiple short blocks might be better than long ones. Some I am thinking

• New Students: We highlight new students in their own words. We have them record to Flipgrid an introduction. No interview. No anchors. Just students in their own words
• Round Robin Content Share. During morning meeting students often share. What if we record that have the students pass around a phone selfie style and share something. I was thinking around Portrait of a Graduate “I am a communicator when I . . . .”
• Catch people being responsible: I could walk around with my phone, record students doing the right thing . . . (no stickers on their computer, cleaning up after themselves at lunch, reading responsibly, . . . )
• Students on the SCA recording and modeling what to do for the Spirit Day
• Students Modeling content and activities
• 30 Second commercials from teachers on topics

For time (because I am a single person operation) the focus has to be LESS editing. Flipgrid is going to be key. Getting people to submit ahead of time is key.

Also, I’ll need to look a few week ahead at the calendar and figure out what teachers might need to get on the morning news.