For teachers
Two minutes on Sunday, not an hour.
Set this week’s topic. The questions come back written — connection ones, and academic ones with the answers. You approve them and run it from the board.
What you are getting
The social-emotional part stops being a second lesson to plan.
Sessions run inside the lessons you already teach — no separate curriculum block, no specialist, no new staff. Ask for academic questions on this week’s topic and those arrive written too, with the answers, so the connection work and the subject happen in the same twenty minutes.
In a six-week pilot at Svenstrup School in Aalborg, Denmark — 800 students, 40 teachers — class cohesion rose +29% against +3.1% in the control classes. One school, Danish, published in full with its limitations. If your classroom looks nothing like a Danish one, run it for three weeks and get a number of your own.
A session, start to finish
Two minutes to plan. Nothing to mark.
Pick the Morning Ritual or a custom session. Set a focus, the number of rounds, and whether to fold in academic questions on today’s topic — those come back textbook-precise, with the answer for you.
A screen no student ever sees: each proposed question, one by one, for you to approve, edit, swap for a fresh one, or throw out. The session cannot start until you have read them all. Unused questions you approved go to your school’s own bank.
Plug in, press begin. Names come up, the colour game runs, the question appears in letters the back row can read. Tap anywhere to move on. Your phone can act as a private companion if you want your notes off the wall.
The Morning Ritual
Three questions that never change.
The daily version uses three fixed questions instead of generated ones. They are identical every day and were never machine-written. The predictability is the point: a child knows exactly what will be asked, which removes the anxiety and leaves only the answering.
The look back. Share a highlight from yesterday after school — something you enjoyed, are proud of, or found interesting. Everyone else, think of curious questions to ask.
The look forward. What are you looking forward to today after school? Share one thing you want to do or try.
Both together. First, share a highlight from yesterday. Then, tell us what you are looking forward to today.
Monday looks back at the weekend, Friday looks forward to it. Note the instruction to the rest of the class in every one: think of curious questions to ask. The children who are not speaking are not an audience.
What you see, privately
A thermometer for the room, not a file on a child.
After a session you can rate how it went and, if you ran the check-out, see how children felt about working with each other. That view is yours. It is never shown on the projector — the app stops and asks you to confirm the screen is off before it will show you anything.
- Nothing is ranked. No leaderboards, no scores a child can see, no display that lets a room infer who is doing well at connection.
- Escalation is slow by design. Questions get more personal over weeks, never within a lesson, and the software cannot jump a class into deep territory even if every signal spikes.
- Session history for families. A parent can be shown who their child paired with and which questions their child answered — never your ratings, never anyone else’s.
- Your data leaves with you. Export everything as CSV or a full archive from Insights, any time.
What costs nothing
Take the method and run it yourself. Really.
The Connection Protocol is the whole thing — the round, the safety rules, how the questions are written, and how to run it with four coloured cards and a printed sheet. It is published under an open licence, so you may use it, adapt it, translate it and teach it without asking us.
What the software adds is the evening. It writes the questions for the subject and topic you are teaching this week, with the answers, so planning is two minutes instead of an hour at a blank page. It runs the Stage, does the pairing, holds the languages, and keeps the private record of how the class changes across the term.
Schools pay $1 per student per month. If yours has not bought it, write anyway — a pilot class is how most of them start.
Questions teachers ask
Is any of this free?
The method is, completely: the protocol is published in full under an open licence and you can run it tomorrow with four coloured cards. The software is $1 per student per month, and your school pays for it, not you.
How do I get it for my class?
Write and say what you teach. We set up a pilot class and send you a join link — accounts are created by a person, never by a child. If your school then wants it, the price is $1 per student per month.
What do my students need?
Nothing. No accounts, no app. They watch the classroom screen.
Where do the questions come from?
The Morning Ritual’s three fixed questions, or a session drafted on the focus and topic you set. You approve every question before class.
What if a student doesn’t want to answer?
They pass. No explanation, no consequence.
How long does a session take?
As long as you want it to. About three minutes a pair, so a class of thirty is about ninety minutes if you run everyone — most teachers run a few pairs a day instead. No timer, no minimum.
Does it work in Danish?
Yes. English and Danish on the Stage, and two more languages per session if you need them.
Take the method. Or take the evening back.
The protocol is published in full and costs nothing — run it tomorrow with four coloured cards. The software writes the questions, runs the screen and keeps the record, for $1 per student per month.