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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The First Week of School

Now that our school year is in full swing and the kids are starting to be able to do some independent work, I am looking back at the first week of school and laughing. I was so overwhelmed, stressed, tired, frustrated, etc... I read somewhere that first few weeks of school are similar to childbirth - they are excruciatingly painful, but once you get through them and your kids know the routine you love them so much that you forget the pain they brought you on their way into your world.

I could not agree with this metaphor more. In fact, I loved my class so much last year that I completely forgot the painstaking days of practicing entering the classroom, unpacking, turning in homework folders, finding spots on the carpet, learning to listen, learning to raise our hands, learning our classroom rules, holding a pencil, using a pencil, holding scissors, using scissors, holding a crayon, using a crayon, lining up, moving around the room and the school, following directions, packing up, etc...

I came in on the first day expecting them to get down to business and was slapped in the face with the reminder that before I could expect them to do so, I would have to teach them how to get down to business. So, I scrapped my plans for the first few days of school and recreated a plan that worked for my brand new Kindergartners.

Here is a copy of my lesson plans for the first week of school. Just about every single activity was inspired by another Kindergarten teacher and I will do my best to give you links to their resources and give them the credit that they deserve!

As the students entered the room each morning, I asked them to stay in line and model the correct procedures for unpacking our backpacks one at a time. One by one they would walk to their cubbies and place lunches and snacks inside, turn their homework folders in by placing them in the designated bin, walk outside to hang up their backpacks, and quietly find their seats on the carpet.

Everyday

Morning Meeting: Our morning meeting every day consists of saying a prayer, the pledge of allegiance, singing good morning to each other, taking attendance, and discussing the days of the week (Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow), the date, weather, etc...

Morning Work: For the first week I found cutting practice pages here and made tracing worksheets here for each student to practice writing his or her own first and last name.

Monday

All About Me Graph: I introduced graphs by having the class help me make one of how many boys and girls there are in our class. After we did a few different graphs (favorite colors, shoe color, hair color, etc...) I explained that they would be making a graph filled with information about themselves. They LOVE to share about themselves, and it was a way for me to get to know them a little bit better so this activity worked out nicely. We used this cute "All About Me" graphing worksheet from The Primary Chalkboard's Back to School Survival Kit.

Chicka Chicka Name Craft: First we read Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, then sang the ABC's forwards and backwards (Instead of, "Next time won't you sing with me," we say, "Next time sing them backwards with me Z, Y, X, W, V, U, T...Now I've sang my ZYX's, bet that's not what you expected!"). Next we completed this really simple craft:

I didn't find a template online for this one, but, as you can see, all you need is a brown rectangle for the trunk of the tree and three green leaves. I told them that they could use different colored crayons and write the letters in their name climbing up the coconut tree just like the letters did in the story.


B.O.Y. Writing Samples: I got this wonderful idea to collect student writing samples at the beginning, middle, and end of the year from Heidi Songs. This has been a really good resource to use at parent teacher conferences. It's also pretty awesome to see how much progress the kids make in writing from day 1 to day 180. I'll share more with you later about how much I LOVE these writing portfolios! You can find the portfolio pages here. 

*I tell them to try their best, but that if all they are able to do is write their name then that is enough for the first day of school. They usually end up looking something like this:

Tuesday

Roll & Graph Back to School: A Teaching Mommy has a great Kindergarten Back to School packet which includes the template to make a dice with different school supplies on it and a corresponding graph to record how many times the dice lands on each item. *If they can handle it I sometimes let the students take turns rolling the dice themselves. 

Brown Bear Craftivity: We read the story Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?, reviewed the different colors we could see around our classroom, and made these cute little puppets from Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten. You can find her template here.

Wednesday

Shapes: We used these shape poems and pictures from Miss Kindergarten to look at and practice the names of each of the shapes.

Behavior Sort: After learning our classroom rules (more to come on that!), we completed this pocket chart activity which required the students to sort pictures of actions into categories - "poor choices" or "good choices". You can pick the pictures up from Mrs. Ricca's Kindergarten blog here.

Thursday

Chrysanthemum Craft: Since my kids had been practicing cutting every single day, I thought I would give them a chance to put their skills to use and cut out the heart shapes that we needed for our Chrysanthemum craft. They did a great job and their chrysanthemums ended up looking really cute! You can find the template for the craft and other Chrysanthemum related activities at First Grade W.O.W.

Friday

Numbers & Ten Frames: On Friday we did a lot of reviewing - lining up, walking around, walking through procedures step by step, and so on. For math, I used these cute number and ten frame cards made by Fran Kramer to introduce one-to-one correspondence and to play a game of "I have...who has (my ten frame)". 

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