Image Map

August 14, 2012

My 1st Day of School (Lesson Plan)


So, yesterday was my first day of school and it was overall a good day.  I guess the big thing is remembering their names - I'm not good with names and it bugs me how long it takes me.  Do you have a method that you do that helps you?  I'm open to advice!

So, here's what I did on my first day.  Just my simple plan.  I always write out my first day as a checklist - too many details to try to fit inside the little boxes in my plan book.

1. Opening - Who am I? worksheet - they did this when I was doing the paperwork type thing.  I collected it and will add to their student info area.

2. Introduce myself - started off with what do they know about me, what do they want to know about me... (basically a K,W, L type thing)

3. Showed them my Snapfish book about 4th grade - pictures from the past year of activities we completed.

4. Tour of the classroom - where things are, what the different areas of the room mean.

5. P.E. prep/Welcome back assembly/Recess time (took 90 minutes of the day)

6. Find Someone Who game and share time about the different things.

7.  Practice Whole Brain Teaching of "Class? Yes!" - That was fun!!!

8.  Over 3/4 of my class brought all their supplies, so we unloaded their backpacks and organized as much as we could.  I love the fact their families looked it up on the class website and knew what to expect.

9. Read Aloud - Did you fill a bucket today?  Brainstorm about our classroom, discussion about behavior, behavior chart, etc.  Talked about how our bulletin board buckets work, then students took an index card and wrote a note to someone in the class to fill their bucket - they turned them into me for me to pass out after I read them.  

10.  Team work Puzzle Challenge - took the idea straight from Fabulous 4th Grade Froggies.  We only had a 1/2 hour to do this activity due to lunch, so it was more to see how much they could accomplish in that amount of time.  Out of the 6 groups, only 2 got far enough along to see a puzzle really forming.  It was a good discussion with those 2 groups sharing what worked to work as a team, and the other groups mentioning what they could have done differently.  As they were working on the puzzles I was wandering around listening, putting office papers on their desks, and taking their first day pictures.

11.  Lunchtime!!!  

12. I had every intention of having a brainstorm of what Read to Self would look like, but that didn't happen... we had to organize the huge pile of office paperwork into 2 piles - the stuff they needed their parents to fill out and the stuff their parents just needed to see.  So we tackled that task, then I had to explain how the Classroom Library was set up.  Then it was just the basic write down your homework (Read 20+ min, Office Paperwork, Agenda $), clean up your area, and head out the door end of school moments.  Mondays we are dismissed at 1:30 - so it's a pretty early day. 

Some things that I realized or remembered about myself... I love having a routine, a real routine, and starting over having to tell them every little thing bugs me.  I don't like talking up a storm but I know it's necessary on the first day.  I loved being a part of the action with playing Find Someone Who... and I loved having my students tell me something they enjoyed about the day as they exited the classroom.  It might be a challenging year, but then again it could be the most wonderful year ever.  We'll see how today goes...
Photobucket

3 comments:

  1. Glad your first day back was a success! I also have trouble getting everything done that I want to those first few days! I guess it's better to be prepared with too many things, rather than not enough activities and idle time!

    Mary
    Teaching Special Kids

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am a new follower...of not only your blog but education blogs in general. You may have explained it already, but can you explain #7 a little bit? All of my grad school professors talk about whole brain teaching so I'd love an activity idea. Thanks!

    griffithfamily04@gmail.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If you google whole brain teaching you can get a lot of videos about it, there is also this video on you tube that shows how to teach it. The link is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBeWEgvGm2Y

      I'm pretty new at it, so I'm learning as I go. I love the student responses that help me to know they are paying attention and are actively listening. The first day I did Class? Yes! and yesterday I went over Teach! Okay! That one is like a pair/share kind of thing. Hope this helps!

      Delete

I hope this was able to help you in some way. I love comments and I like to reply via email. Please make sure your profile is set up with your email address (and that it's not a noreply-comment@blogger.com). Have a great day!