How We Use a Daily Agenda Slide to Create a Calm, Consistent Start to Every Class
The bell rings. Your classroom empties, and for a blissful three seconds, it’s silent. You take a deep breath . . . but before you can release it, students start pouring in. Loudly. You’re answering three questions at once. Someone forgot their Chromebook. Someone spilled blue Gatorade . . . again. You take attendance while simultaneously hunting for the cable that connects your laptop to the projector.
After too many days like this, we’d had enough.
We needed a calmer, more consistent way to start class. We decided to start small: with a new daily agenda slide. And it worked.
Some classroom problems are thorny and complex, but sometimes a small shift can make a big difference. Here’s how our simple daily agenda slide (with a cozy aesthetic that speaks to our souls) created structure, routine, and a little bit of peace in our classrooms.
Why Your Classroom Needs an Agenda Slide—Not Just a Whiteboard
We had always written our daily agenda on the whiteboard for students, but the number of times they burst in without looking at it, demanding to know what we’d be doing that day, never failed to amaze us.
So we knew that a daily agenda slide had logistical value (and we’ve shared before about other benefits of a daily agenda slide, including its role in lesson planning and parent communication).
But a daily agenda slide has value beyond these logistics. Our students thrive in safe and predictable environments, which have physical, mental, emotional, and academic benefits. Visual anchors help students focus and generally work better than auditory reminders. And we all do better with a gentle start to class.
Sure, a daily agenda slide tells us “what we’re doing today,” but it also affects how we enter a space, and how we enter a space has a larger impact than we realize.
These benefits are particularly impactful in classrooms with anxiety, neurodivergence, or transition struggles, a list that describes pretty much every high school classroom. In these situations, especially, a consistent daily agenda slide can act as a daily grounding tool.
Once we started using our daily agenda slide, our students began to walk into the room and look at the whiteboard, where it was displayed, before looking at us. It was quiet. It was peaceful. It worked.
What’s on Our Daily Agenda Slide—and Why
Today’s Plan
The most obvious element to include on a daily agenda slide is, of course, the agenda. Students want to know what they’ll be doing each day, so displaying it at the front of the room as they’re walking in eases their anxiety. It also prevents you from having to answer the inevitable “What are we doing today?” question over and over again.
But even more importantly, the first item on the agenda was always our daily bellringer activity. Without fail, our classroom routine started with 10–15 minutes where students worked through their weekly menu of bellringer activities while we took attendance, answered questions, and checked in with individual students. For students who needed explicit directions, we always “suggested” which activity to do that day. But students also had the freedom to choose whichever activity on the menu they wanted to work on. The combination of an explicit suggestion and flexibility made all students feel comfortable, confident, and empowered to get right to work.
Homework and/or Upcoming Due Dates
One of the anxieties students are seeking to allay when they walk into our classrooms is what they’ll have for homework that night. Just like us, our students go through each day juggling plans, responsibilities, and limited time, so giving them this information allows them to plan, breathe a sigh of relief, or muster up the determination to finish in class so they don’t have homework.
As we moved away from assigning nightly homework, we transitioned this space on our daily agenda slide to a list of upcoming due dates. Students who had used class time wisely could check to ensure they were on pace; students who had fallen behind knew what they needed to prioritize and catch up on.
Reminders
Finally, we included a space for those miscellaneous reminders we needed to communicate to students—materials they needed to bring, after-school workshops they could attend, and school business they needed to know. Putting this information on the slide ensured that every student received it (and that we didn’t forget).
If you work at a school that requires you to include your daily learning objective, a daily agenda slide is a great place to include it.
If you want to amp up the “chill vibes,” you could include a calming quotation, an emoji check-in, a mini playlist visual, a “currently reading” feature, or a countdown timer. We kept it simple, but these are all ways to maximize the calming atmosphere you’re trying to create.
By presenting this information in a visually aesthetic layout, we created a situation where students were far more likely to look at the agenda than they were when we wrote it on the board, and even more importantly, a situation where students were more likely to remember what they saw.
How an Aesthetic Daily Agenda Slide Can Shift the Whole Vibe
We’ve always been big on aesthetics—we want the materials we give students to look nice, not just be functional. As two perfectionists, we eventually got tired of basic slide templates, too-busy graphics, too-bright colors, and cheesy education-themed clip art.
We decided to channel one of our favorite places: a coffee shop. Kate created a selection of slides that made us feel like we were sitting in a coffee shop, watching customers order their favorite customized caffeine hit while listening to jazzy instrumentals. We used warm, earthy colors instead of the bright neons that so often feature in education materials.
Was this necessary? Maybe not. But students respond to visuals, especially those who tune out walls of text. We felt happier. And an inviting daily agenda slide with a cozy design sets the tone for productive calm. It says, “This is a place where we get work done . . . without chaos.”
coffeehouse vibes
Our Favorite Daily Agenda Slides
We love creating a “coffeehouse vibe” in our classrooms. We like Spotify coffeehouse playlists, Starbucks Mode during independent work time.
And yes, we’ve been known to make a lunchtime run for an afternoon latte and mocha pick-me-up.
This daily agenda template fits that mood perfectly, and it’s easy to customize.
Beyond the Agenda Slide—“Starbucks Mode” and a Culture of Calm
As we shifted to a flipped classroom model, meaning that class time was often used for students to work rather than for us to lecture, we started encouraging students to adopt “Starbucks mode” as they worked.
We played quiet instrumental music, and these were the rules:
- Headphones on/earbuds in if you want your own tunes (or are listening to book audio or a screencast).
- You can sit wherever you’d like, but your bum must be in a seat (be reasonable—not at my desk, not somewhere dangerous).
- It’s Starbucks, so we’re all strangers. Don’t be the weirdo who talks too much to people who obviously aren’t interested.
- Remember: quiet, zen, coffee shop vibes. We’re a nice Starbucks.
Projecting the agenda slide with calm visuals and playing quiet music provided visual and auditory cues that reminded students how they were expected to behave and what they were supposed to be doing.
Bonus: 4 Ways We Use Our Daily Agenda Slide as a Teacher Time-Saver
A truly calm, consistent classroom is, of course, best led by a teacher who isn’t losing their mind. And we all know that saving time is one of the things teachers love most, so we’re also sharing four tips to help save your sanity.
- Keep a clean copy of your master template and make copies for each prep. We had a separate Google Slides file for our English 10 class and our AP Literature class, so we could just pull up the file we needed each period (but our original formatting stayed nice and clean).
- Put the most recent day first (no more scrolling!).
- Use the notes section for reminders to yourself—where to start in each period, which students you need to talk to, what changes you want to make for next year.
- Build a reverse-chronological record of your lessons. When you put the most recent day first and add notes about what did and didn’t work, you create a year-long plan, saving you time when you sit down to lesson plan the next year. Having your year-long plan in the “daily agenda” format helps you to remember just how long each activity takes when real students are involved.
If the beginning of class feels frantic day after day, you may not need to overhaul your routine to introduce a little sanity. Instead, anchor your routine with one small change. A thoughtful, aesthetic daily agenda slide can calm the chaos for you and your students. And isn’t that what we all want most?
Spend a blissful afternoon designing an agenda slide that brings you peace, or, if you don’t find hours on Canva relaxing, grab your ready-made coffeehouse vibes Google Slides daily agenda template to save time.
