Back to the Grind

Wow! I cannot believe one week of school has almost went by. I have really enjoyed getting to know my students this year and can't wait to see what this year brings. I was excited when I saw the #blogamonth topic for this week. The topic for this month is:

How will you make the first week of school meaningful to your students?

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What have you done with the first 5 days of school?

Let me just say I had a different feeling coming into this school year. I have never been as excited to get started! My first year I was just plain nervous and last year I wasn't really ready to get back to school. This year I completely felt different and was ready to start! I love that feeling!

Every year my school starts the school year out with an orientation night. Students and parents are invited to visit their teacher's classroom. I love this because I am able to meet the students the night before school and get to know their parents as well. I also love being able to let the parents know what my expectations are for the year. They were bombarded by me this year with technology! I introduced ClassDojo, Twitter, Remind, and Kidblog to them. A lot of the parents were very excited about using these tools to communicate with me. I have all of my parents signed up for ClassDojo and even some parents got Twitter to follow our classroom Twitter page.

On a sidenote....follow us on Twitter!!! @4timmclass 

Today is the fifth day of school! On the first day school I do a variety of activities. I first like to introduce myself using a PowerPoint. I have fun facts about where I am from, who is in my family, how I spent my summer, what I like to do in my free time, and what my favorite things are. Then I give a pop quiz!! :) There are about 9 questions that they have to answer about me. This is always fun to see if they remember what I just told them. Then I did something fun to get to know them this year. I passed around a roll of toilet paper and told them to take however much they thought they would need. I never told them what the activity was. Some students took one piece while others took lots and lots of pieces. After they passed the roll around, I told them they had to introduce themselves by telling me fun facts about themselves. However many squares of toilet paper they took was how many facts they had to tell me about themselves!

We do a lot of icebreaker activities on the first few days of school along with going over rules and procedures. We PRACTICE, PRACTICE, and PRACTICE our procedures to get them down! I also like to go over my expectations with students. We discuss the school rules and make a list of what that looks like. After we get done making the list, I write it up on a poster and every student signs the poster.

One of my absolute favorite things I have done on the first two days of school was something I tried out this year. It is called an All About Me Museum. Students were asked on the first day to bring 3 items that represents them that could fit in their backpacks. The next day of school I had them write a sentence or two about how the item represents them and they also named their museum display and wrote it on a piece of construction paper. We all walked around the room looking at the different displays (not touching). :)

I really try to get to know my students at the beginning of the year with different activities. The first few days of school are always some of my favorite days because we get to do fun icebreakers and I always enjoy learning about my students. I want to make them feel comfortable in my classroom and want to make sure they know that I care about them. It's all about relationships and how I can make an impact on their lives. They have definitely already made an impact on my life!