Morning Announcements

Here's a peek at how each school day starts for me--with morning announcement duty! Our school has a talented team of 5th graders who work hard both in front of the camera and behind the scenes. Here's one of our news anchors:

 The anchors read a script from a monitor, updated daily by one of our computer programmers:

Something we added this year to announcements is a daily "Did You Know" segment. Teachers and students send in interesting facts about things they're learning in class, and we feature one each day on announcements. One of our first grade teachers, the fabulous Reagan Tunstall, has even made this into a center for her students! Here are examples of some of the facts submitted by her class:

"Did You Know" facts--1st graders read about this in one of their small reading groups. Don't you love the pictures?

We also have national and local weather reports each day. Here is the script written for one of our weather reporters to read while in front of a green screen:

Hmmm, an oversight on my part--we normally don't use the term "work week" during announcements, but I love the official-sounding weather vocabulary in the rest of this script! The students go to one of our local TV station's websites for weather forecast information and pictures.

And here's someone with a super important job--switchboard controller! He is in charge of the transitions between our two cameras and the computer, and makes volume adjustments when necessary.

Our teachers turn on announcements as soon as the bell rings. Before doing the pledge and patriotic song, we start each day with upbeat music and a funny picture like this:

Here's a short video sample from last week. Please note that this is not the entire morning announcements; I edited out a few things like the pledge, patriotic song, and moment of silence. I did include a little behind-the-scenes practice to give you an idea of our format: 

I really like the way we do our school announcements--in fact, it's a duty that I don't mind doing at all! By this time of year, the kids know exactly what to do and they are well-behaved, too.
How about your morning announcements? Do you have a "Did You Know" segment, too (or something similar)? Please leave a comment--I'd love to hear about the cool things going on at other schools during morning announcements! 
~Swersty