The first week is (almost) finished and I thought I’d share some of our highlights! It has been great getting to know my students, and I am looking forward to getting into even more routine next week. What did we do? Check it out…
My goal for the first week of school is to start to get to know my students, to start to build some routines, to get them excited about school, and to help them begin to build relationships with each other. In addition to going over safety things and other such “business” the first day, the best part of the day was the afternoon where I had the students do 4 rotations:
1. Meet with me in the classroom library to learn how it is organized and to start a list of “Books I want to read”! It was a great way to start to share my excitement about books.
2. Name activities…the students had a blast using Scrabble letters to figure out what their name is “worth”–and then finding all their classmates’ names in a word search.
3. Working on a giant puzzle piece (more to come on this!)
4. Independent reading from our “just for fun” books
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| Snooping at a book bin and writing down books on their “Books I Want to Read” list. The Mike Lupica bin was a popular one with this group! |
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| They had a blast–and I learned that lots of students did NOT know how to spell their middle names! |
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| I loved watching them work together on their hunt… |
Days 2 and 3 started to get us a little bit more into content–with more “getting to know you” activities sprinkled in.
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| Making “Friend Venns”…tomorrow we will try to do a 3 way Venn! |
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| Day 1 of our reading mini lessons… |
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| Day 2 of our reading lessons |
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| Setting the stage for a year of tough math challenges…how will we handle it? We had a great talk about it today! |
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| We did a math survey today…I want to know who my reluctant math students are–so I can change their minds!!! |
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| The rest of the math survey…lots of “I don’t like time tests!” There was QUITE a cheer when I told them we wouldn’t be doing them! |
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| This was SO much fun! No more “Getting to Know You” bingo…we interviewed each other and made mosaics in the process. They LOVED it! |
So…I hope all of you had a great week…stay tuned next week for some more classroom updates as we REALLY dig in to fourth grade!
(NOTE: Lots of these activities came from my Teaching Teamwork resource that you can find HERE if you are interested.)
