The First Week of School

During the first week of school we did a lot of work on routines and procedures, but I wanted the kids to get used to our schedule by doing reading/writing activities during our E/LA block, Math activities during our Math block, and so on. I'm going to break what we did down by subject area here to make things easier in case you are a departmentalized teacher or like to plan one subject at a time :)

MATH

 Math About Me Craftivity
I got this freebie from Create-Abilities and it was such a great way for me to get to know my kids through math and to see what kind of mathematical background knowledge/ability they were coming in with.

What's Your Number
I split the kids up into groups and had them complete this free activity from Amy Groesbeck's First Day of School Icebreakers called What's Your Number. It required the group to ask each other questions involving numbers and do some simple addition and subtraction. This was a great opportunity for me to teach/model the right way to work with a group and it also helped to get the kids thinking about Math again!

Exploring Math Tools

Before starting our first math unit, I wanted to make sure that the kids knew the names of all of our different math manipulatives and knew where they could be found in our classroom. I set up a bin on each table with one of each math tool and gave them a recording sheet on which they were asked to draw a picture of the tool, write down it's name, and explain what it could be used for/how it helps us in math. I split the kids up into groups and let them explore and work together for this activity and then we reconvened on the carpet and shared our findings.

Name Pattern 
The first unit that we are doing in Math this year is patterns, so I gave them snap cubes and pattern blocks and after we practiced creating different kinds of patterns I had them complete this name pattern activity that you can grab for free here.

E/LA

At first I was planning on waiting until week 2 to have the kids check out books, but by day two I realized I needed to give them something that they could do independently and quietly for at least 20 minutes every day or I was going to lose my mind! Since my library is not completely set up and ready, I took the books that were ready and sorted them into bins by reading level. I looked at the kids' reading levels from second grade and matched them up with bins that had books on, a little bit below, and a little bit above their levels. They were SO excited to get books which made my teacher heart so happy! As I was explaining how they would be going to tables and previewing books before choosing one or two to check out they started slowly inching towards the tables and could not contain themselves.

Once they picked out their books I told them that they could choose any spot in the room where they would be comfortable and able to focus and read quietly for 20 minutes. They were all over the place (under tables, on the carpet, etc...) but they did it and it was awesome! Afterwards I asked them to share how they felt about reading today and one of my boys said, "That was the best experience I've ever had reading at school!"

We also talked about our goals for Reading this year and how we can make reading the best it can be.

Narrative Writing: True Stories
On one of the first days I gave my kids the Narrative Writing On-Demand Assessment just to see what they could do in writing with zero instruction from me. I love doing this because it helps me to figure out where to start with writing instruction but also because it is so fun to show them and their parents this piece alongside future pieces and see how much they have improved since the beginning of the year.

We continued working on narrative writing throughout the rest of the week and, after a few days we looked at what we had done so far and talked about whether we were writing like storytellers or reporters.

CONTENT

In the future, content will be our Science/Social Studies time, so I used this time to do community building activities (that counts as Social Studies, right?).

Get to Know Your Classmates Scavenger Hunt
I gave each child a clipboard and a Scavenger Hunt sheet from Amy Groebeck's First Day of School Icebreakers and had them travel around the room asking each other questions in order to fill up their page.

(Can you tell which show I am currently watching?)

Growth Mindset
In order to start the year off on a positive note and create an environment in which the kids feel like making mistakes is OK and that they can get better at anything if they put their mind to it and work hard, I decided to introduce the concept of having a Growth Mindset.

We started off by discussing what the difference is between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset and then read the book Giraffes Can't Dance (also available on youtube here).



We talked about how having a growth mindset help Gerald reach his goals and how it could help us in school too!

Then we completed these awesome Growth Mindset Flipbooks by Teach Create Motivate. Which encourage the kids to reflect on their own mindset and make plans to have a growth mindset in order to reach their goals this year.

Mind Mapping 
Over the summer I went to a Professional Development session on the first six weeks of school where they taught us a few activities that we could use to get to know our students and then use again in the future during actual instruction. My favorite activity that we did was creating mind maps.
They had us draw a picture or write our name in the middle of a page and then draw roads coming from the center for the "main ideas" or things in our life that are important/make us special. Along each road we added details and then when we were finished we had to go around the room and explain why we drew each thing on our map and what it meant. It was a great activity to get to know the other teachers at the session and it really helped me and my students get to know each other during the first week too!

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