the first day of school: lesson plan

Last week I mentioned how I was hit with the shocking realization that Open House is only a few weeks away.  And since Open House is only a few weeks away, that means the first day of school is only a few weeks and a DAY away!  Holy cow.  (To put a number on it...TWO WEEKS from this Thursday...yikes.)

This will be my seventh year teaching and my fifth year in first grade.  I am not that nervous about the first day...yet.   I've been through enough first day rodeos to feel confident that I (and my fabulous co-teacher) can handle pretty much anything.  The number one key to a successful first day of school: plan, plan, and plan some more.  Make it a point to overplan!  If you don't use all of your ideas or copies, they can get thrown in the sub tub so they don't go to waste...but you do NOT want to be left hangin' high and dry with twenty-six little pairs of eyes glued on you.

I made this little cutie last year to help with the first week(s) planning a little easier...it's my Back to School Bible!

Last year I took the time to put all of the masters for the "must-do" back-to-school things in this binder...along with any pertinent directions...

See?  Here is a project we will do sometime in the second week of school all ready to go (aside from the copy-making and cutting, of course).  All of my masters for my getting-to-know you class books are in here ready to be run.  When I'm done making copies, I will stick everything back in the binder and it will be good to go for next year!

Some basic lesson plan stuff is in here, too, such as the plans I bought from TPT last year for launching the math workshop.  

So glad I took the time to organize this stuff last year!  Otherwise I would have total amnesia probably and forget about that "must-do" cutie-pie activity until the middle of September, haha!

We start school on a Thursday this year...it's kind of weird, but I do like it because it gives you two days to get your feet wet and then the weekend to recover before diving in headfirst on Monday.  I have some things in mind for the first full week of school, but I will probably make some adjustments to those mental plans once pre-planning starts and I have a chance to collab with my co-teacher.

So, here's my outline for Day One:

7:45-8:30: Greet students; have them hang up bookbags.  (DEAL WITH SUPPLIES LATER.)  Students will color in their coloring books.*  See footnote!  (PS:  I just can't deal with supplies while parents are in the room...I just can't!!  At some point during the day I get my para to attack that task or if she's not ever free I find a few minutes to do it later in a mass dump-out-your-bookbag-fashion.  I do have a system-maybe that will be a topic for a post-I just can't deal with the chaos while parents are in the room and I'm striving for a zen atmosphere.)

8:30-9:00: Clean up; teach transition signal/going to the carpet procedure.  Announcements & pledge.  Introduce teachers (All About books).  Have students go around the circle and say their names; Ice Breaker activity.  (Still thinking about WHAT kind of an ice breaker.)

9:00-9:20 (or when there's a break in hallway traffic): Teach line-up & restroom procedures; restroom break.

9:20-10:00: First Day Jitters read-aloud & activity.  ("My first day in first grade I felt ______.")  (Blogger's note: I will probably use a page out of a pack I bought on TpT to go along with the craftivity later on in the morning, but Anna Brantley's got some free pages that you can also grab here!)

10:00-10:30: Read-aloud: David Goes to School.  Rules discussion.  What kinds of rules do we need at school?  Why do we need rules?  Use students' responses to draft Class Promise.  If time allows, have all students sign the Class Promise.

10:30-11:00: Tour of classroom and school.  (There have been years this hasn't happened because of time escaping, but we find somewhere to squeeze it in eventually.)

11:00-12:00: The Kissing Hand.  Read-aloud.  Send students to the tables to work on Kissing Hand minibooks and craft.  Kissing Hand cookies (if time allows, or can take to lunch).

Here is what the crafty looks like-the pic is from Classroom Fun!

 (Blogger's note: You can grab the freebie minibook here.  I bought Mrs. Baldacchino's Kissing Hand unit on TPT last year just for the adorable Chesters!  Last year I totally lost my mind and let my kiddos paint...it was fun, but time-consuming.  Since I have 30+ on my roll right now, this year I will probably stick to letting them color!  And I might run the masters half size so the Chester is a little bit smaller.)


12:00-12:30: Clean up.  Review hallway & restroom procedures.  Teach lunch procedure and practice.  Restroom break on the way to lunch.

12:30-1:15: Lunch & restroom break.

1:15-1:35: Calendar Math (teacher does-tomorrow will pick a Name of the Day to help with Calendar)

1:35-2:00: Graphing activity (how do we go home?)

2:00-2:30: Teach Math Tool Rules (anchor chart).  Exploration stations with manipulatives (Unifix cubes & pattern blocks).  (Some years by this point we have run out of time for this-no biggie, we get to exploration stations big time in the next week as we launch our math workshop.)

2:30-3:00: Teach recess procedures; recess.  (If it's not too hot...if it is plan B is indoor recess with its own set of procedures.)

3:00-3:45: Snack.  Teach dismissal procedure.  TAG KIDS FOR DISMISSAL (so, so important!).  Pack up to go home.  Discuss morning arrival procedure for tomorrow.  Escort car riders and walkers to designated location.

WHEW!  Just typing all that out made me tired...and making it through the marathon of the first day is about a million times more exhausting.  I will post plans for Day Two soon!

Footnote: If you are lucky enough to live near a Publix, visit the customer service counter.  Tell them you are a teacher, bat your eyelashes for good measure, and ask for a class set of coloring books.  They gave me 30 last year no problemo.  They are SUPER DUPER for the first day of school because a.) they're free b.) you don't have to make copies and c.) even your speediest colorers won't make it through the ENTIRE coloring book that first morning.  If you DON'T have a Publix near you, no worries...I have a freebie coloring book in my TpT shop available for download!

7.14.13 Sunday Smorgasbord!

Linking up with Fabulous in First for a Sunday smorgasbord post!  Randomness abounds...you've been warned. :)

1.)  Project for this week:

This came in the mail for me a couple of weeks ago:

I have skimmed it, but over the next couple of weeks I'm going to jump into it seriously and figure out how it's going to work for us this year.  I am DITCHING the basal spelling lists this year.  The textbook isn't Common Core aligned and I don't LOVE the stories in it.  We're also supposed to be getting Saxon phonics (which I know nothing about) but I am going to use WTW during our intervention block.  We'll see how that pans out.

Oh, and my mini-project for the week is to work on my word wall words.  I am not kidding when I say I have made new words EVERY YEAR.  I end up not liking the set I had the year before and I re-make them.  

2.)  I have one more week of grad school stuff left for the summer semester.    Cramming three classes into a month and a half is intense.  It was worth it because it means I'll graduate next December, but it also meant my summer was spent either in class or doing assignments for class.  I actually have a paper that I'm SUPPOSED to be writing right now, but I got a little sidetracked...as soon as I hit "Publish" I will go do it, promise!  I only have two weeks before work starts back up again, but we're taking next week as our family vacation.  We will be at the LAKE for a whole week!

This is Little Miss at the lake last week when we went for the Fourth-she loves it.  She takes after her daddy and is a little fish!  The best part is all that swimming wears her OUT and she sleeps so good.  We are going on vacay with my in-laws, including my sister-in-law and her adorable girls.  Can't wait!

3.) Since we're going away next week, that means this week I gotta get in my classroom and do some work.  The building is going to be open a couple of days and I'm going to try to get in there and get some things done.  The past couple of years I have scaled waayy back on how much time I spend getting ready.  I have been in the same room for 4 going on 5 years, so I pretty much have everything the way I like it.  I didn't even take posters off the wall when I left in May.  The main things on my to-do list are move the furniture back into place, get the computers hooked up (hate hate hate doing that), and take a little peek at my classroom library.  I am hoping that my co-teacher and I can meet up and knock these tasks out super quick so we can resume vacation mode for a little bit longer!

This has been kind of a weird summer...normally I have a whole stash of school goodies in a corner of my office ready to head into the classroom...this year I have bought almost nothing.  NOTHING.  One pack of neon sentence strips, the Words Their Way book, and the polka dot buckets I showed you last week.  I am trying really really hard to adopt the "less is more" approach...we are being furloughed again next year, I have to buy books for grad school, and Little Miss needs a fall wardrobe...and in years past I have spent waaayyy too much!  I will go buy 100 glue sticks next week (because that's the bare minimum I require) and a few boxes of crayons, but that's IT for this year.  

I do have first day of school plans done...I'll try to share later this week...we start school on a Thursday this year, so I only did the first two days.  I figure we will have to regroup once we see who shows up and what kind of a class we have this year!  (PLEASE let all the babies on my roll be sweet!!)

OK, that's it for tonight...I have a paper to write on text complexity.  OH, JOY!  I have my Coke Zero nearby and Pandora blasting away...here's hoping I get it knocked out quickly!

TpT and a Ben Franklin FREEBIE!

Guess who's joined the world of TpT?  That's right, little old me!  The shop is still pretty empty, but there are a couple of freebies AND my first for-sale unit!  Here's what ya can find...

So you know how the first week of school is...busy, busy, busy!  And the mornings can be...um...how do I put this delicately...CHAOTIC.  Sniffling kids, lost parents, school supplies spilling out of bookbags, and let's not forget the two or three or four attendance counts that MUST be done by 9 AM.  It's brutal, especially when our little first grade sweeties are just getting used to the first grade routine!  The first week or so I try to have SUPER EASY Morning Work that they can do mostly independently so that I am free to handle crises put out fires take care of teacherly business...I also need assignments that might take a smidge longer than my normal MW assignments because the morning arrival stretches out just a bit those first few days (at least for me-late buses, new students, late morning announcements, et. cetera).  SO!  I will share with you in an upcoming post one of my tricks for first week 'o school Morning Work, but this might tide you over for now..my first TpT download is a little Book About Me for the kiddos to work on during the first week of school craziness.  Head over to my TPT shop to check it out!  It's pretty flexible...you could also use it for writing portfolio baselines, filler work, or toss it into a Sub Tub for an unexpected absence.

Okay, now on to the Social Studies goodness! Have I mentioned that one of my summer classes is a content literacy course?  Well, it is...I have learned SO much and I'm really thinking about how I teach Social Studies and how I can do it better!  One of my focuses (foci?  What's the right word here?) for the class is a specific standard that I have to teach about the most RANDOM collection of American historical figures ev-ah: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Lewis & Clark and Sacgawea, Harriet Tubman, George Washington Carver, and Theodore Roosevelt...if you're shaking your head right now because you can't figure out what these folks have in common, don't worry, I'm right there with ya!  But it's a standard, so away we go!  I am in the process of creating mini-units about each one of these fun Americans...believe it or not I'm learning a little bit as I go, too (which is a little scary considering I've been teaching about these people for going on FIVE YEARS!).  I posted my first one tonight and here's a little preview...

SQUEE!  I am just a leeeettle excited about this...emergent reader, graphic organizers, writing papers, vocab cards, quote bubbles, a poem (that I WROTE...and I would not call myself a poet...but I realized that there's ZERO poems out there about Mr. Franklin, so what's a first grade teacher to do?!), and this little cutie right here...

Yup, a craftivity.  I LOVE writing craftivities.  They are tons of fun for the kids and I totally hold them over their heads as an incentive to get their writing to a good place.  The whole shebang is available in my TPT shop!

Also...there is a teensy little freebie that I uploaded as a companion...it's an All About Benjamin Franklin writing paper.  Nothing fancy...but if you're interested head on over to scoop it up.

I am so excited to begin this new adventure!  I have been saying for a long time that I wanted to open a TpT shop and I am FINALLY doing it.  I have lots of ideas-if you are a Georgia teacher especially, get excited because I am about tackle some of these trickier frameworks lessons to make some things that are a little more teacher and student friendly.

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Favorite Pins Friday

Linking up today for Favorite Pins Friday!  (Side story: I :heart Mrs. Carroll's The First Grade Parade.  A couple of years ago, it was the very first teacher blog I discovered!)SCHOOL PINS first!

 

This one (from New Management)  is school-related!  How smart-send home reminders on paper bracelets.  In the past I have literally packing-taped notes to students' shirts, but this is a LITTLE classier.  

Crayons will fit in a soap box.  Whaatt?  This is news to me!  I love it, though!  I often have little friends who don't bring school supplies and of course the supply closet is well-stocked (by moi) with extra crayons and glue sticks for them.  This idea alone is Winning, but if you follow through to the post at Miss Squirrel's the color-coded organization will make your heart go pitter-patter.

I just pinned this a few minutes ago...adorable Petes from A day in first grade!  We are Pete-obsessed in my class, so we will definitely be doing this.

ALL my pins aren't school-related...  I made these (skinny!) pizza logs last night from Emily Bites.  They are AMAZING.  I am still working on losing baby weight (hah!  19 months later, that's what I'm calling it!) and these are only 2 WW Points Plus each...yet they taste as yummy as pizza rolls.  I had four of these little puppies and was stuffed, yet that was only 8 points.  Going in the recipe box for sure!

Another recipe...this one is from the Clean Eating diet site.  This pasta was SOOOOO good!  I loved how easy it was to throw together (the worst part was cooking the pasta and the turkey!  Seriously!)  and it made a ton.  We threw the leftovers into the freezer.  That will be a nice treat one evening those first few weeks of school when I am soooo tired and my feet hurt soooo bad!


Not a ton of pins because I haven't been Pinterest-crazy this week...summer classes for grad school are wrapping up, which means I have been stuck in the research-write-research-some-more cycle.  I am such a nerd though because I LOVE it-I am so excited about this degree.  I am getting my M.Ed in Reading, Literacy, and Language...it's a 1.5 year program BUT when I'm done I will be certified K-12 in reading!  Yay!  (Right now I'm certified P-5 in Early Childhood.)  The only bad thing about grad school on top of working full time (and a part-time job on the side, and being a mommy) is that I have less time for the fun stuff in life, like Pinterest!  (And sleep, but that's another story...and what the Keurig I got for Mother's Day is for!  Haha!)  Another post will be coming soon about my first-few-days-of-school lesson plans...and hopefully an announcement about my new TpT shop!

Open House 2013

How is it July already?!  I swear, the summer flies by when I'm not looking. Guess what's 3 weeks from today exactly?  Dun dun dun...OPEN HOUSE.  Doesn't seem possible, does it?

I don't know what Open House is like at your school, but at ours it's...well...usually a little disappointing.  It looms over us for all of pre-planning ("OPEN HOUSE!  We have to have our rooms ready for OPEN HOUSE!") and then when it arrives, I don't usually have that great of a turn-out.  Last year I think my co-teacher and I had 8 or 9 parents show up and that was a record.   It's okay, they all turn out EN MASSE the next morning bright and early.  I have accepted this.  (I can't call parents ahead of time to remind them because usually class lists aren't printed until right before Open House starts due to students withdrawing/registering/etc..  One fabulous year our lists CHANGED IN THE MIDDLE of Open House because they goofed up the inclusion list.  That was fun.)

Anyway, I still like to have a little treat to hand out at Open House for the kiddos and parents who do show up.  I do something a little different every year...I've done the cute kindergarten goody bags (with the penny for good luck, the eraser because we all make mistakes, etc.)...the popcorn bags...Starbursts ("because we are all first grade stars!")...and last year my creativity was ebbing low so I passed out cupcakes.  This year I'm doing Tootsie Pops.  The hubster and I went out to eat last week at a restaurant while we were on our 5th anniversary minibreak and they give you a Tootsie Pop on your way out the door.  I couldn't remember the last time I had a Tootsie Pop!  Turns out, they're pretty good...and I realized I could use the cutesy "Thanks for popping in!" slogan that I used on the popcorn bags a few years ago.

So, this afternoon (during the baby's naptime) I got to work.  Well, I guess I should backtrack...this morning she and I went to Target.  Here is a picture of my goodies:

Aren't you impressed with the restraint I showed?  The only things I needed for this project were the neon paper and the snack size baggies.  I don't know how the polka dotted and galvanized mini buckets and that chevron/polka-dotty dress ended up in my cart.  I blame Little Miss.  (THE DRESS IS SO CUTE....it has a purple polka dot bow!  Ahem.)

Next, I printed out these tags that I made.  They say "thanks for popping in!" if you can't read them.

 Oh yes, and I ordered these from Amazon.  I ordered the minis-they were $12 for that big bag (200 pops).  I figured I will use these for bribes treats for the first few weeks of school.  (Confession: I bribe reward students for bringing back their beginning-of-school paperwork, especially their lunch applications!)

Then it was just a matter of putting the tags in the baggies and dropping in a few Tootsie pops!  Easy peasy, lemon breezy!  And look-my bag of mini Tootsie Pops came with a surprise!  (That's a Blow Pop, in case you can't tell.)

 Ta-da!  From start to finish (not including the Target shopping trip) this took me less than 20 minutes.  I only made 18 bags because I sincerely doubt I will have more than that show up, even if I give treats to sibilngs and parents, too.

Ready to go!  I can check one thing off my to-do list, at least!

PS:  If you want the tags, I uploaded them here!

Classroom Management Linky!

First linky party!  I hope I'm doing it right!  If you stick through it to the end, there's a little freebie.  Nothing fancy!

So, classroom management.  It's kindaofabigdeal, no?  And I have all the cutesy answers that I would give if I were interviewing for a new position:

• "I believe that positive reinforcement has more power than consequences."  (Yeah, I do.)
• "I have A System."  (Well, kind of.)
• "I strive to contact parents just as often about THE GOOD as the bad!"  (Well...if I have the time, I do.)

Here's the thing about classroom management, though...I can't just sum it all up in a neat little package.  I have had years that were ah-maz-ing where the kids practically managed themselves.  I have had years where it was a three-ring circus no matter WHAT I did.  (In my 7 years teaching, I have had two merry-go-rounds with THAT class.  You know, the combination of personalities that is so terrible that you start fantasizing about summer in November.)  But you know what's hysterical?  I now have a reputation as being a "strong" teacher with "excellent" classroom management.  You know what that means...I get the wild children!  Part of it is because I co-teach the inclusion class, for sure.  And that has meant more than my fair share (I think) of out-of-control, wild, disruptive children (some of whom have had serious emotional disorders, so no parent-shaming here).  Last year I had a child who pitched tantrums that were so epic that it took multiple trained adults (read: not me!  Off the hook for that one!) to restrain and de-escalate her.  She ended up leaving us in November for an alternative school and is now in a residential treatment facility.  That's some serious business, for sure.  And yet...learning carried on, we did what we needed to do around the tantrums, and I don't think anyone's too scarred by it.  (Although I could do with a class of sweetie-pies next year, if the Gods of Classroom Lists are listening.)

So, what do I do?  Nothing that special, truly.  Here's my top 5 list of Classroom Management Tips (I was going to do a Top 10, but then I would be writing a novel):

1.) Lay out rituals and routines for EVERYTHING.  It is not crazy to do anchor charts about every itsy-bitsy thing in the beginning.  (I have made an anchor chart about Math Tools every year...3 rules: Share.  No throwing math tools.  DO NOT PUT MATH TOOLS IN YOUR MOUTH.  And we review it every single time we get out math tools.  That leaves no room for misunderstanding.)  Review those rituals and routines for much longer than you think you should have to and at the FIRST sign of things getting squirrely around the ages, review them again. 

2.) When you are teaching or reviewing procedures, let your favorite naughty child model both the wrong way and the right way.  (Thanks Daily 5, for that tip-it applies to regular old classroom management, too.)  You cannot praise too much for doing the right thing AND if that little trouble-causing cupcake is an attention-seeker, you've just satisfied his/her craving for the spotlight for a bit.

3.)  Have some kind of a system for individual rewards and whole class rewards.  For individual rewards, you can try the points system, a clip chart, or whatever your heart desires.  (This year I'm going to give classdojo a whirl since we do PBIS at our school and it would line up perfectly with our points.)  For whole class rewards, I have had great success with brownie points.  (And we don't always do brownies...you can do cupcakes, popcorn, whatever.)  Put the display where they can see it, set the number ahead of time, and SELL IT. 

4.) For children who have behavioral disorders or demonstrate extremely unacceptable behaviors (tantrums, hitting, ripping up work, the list is very very long of what could fall under this category), you're going to have to tweak the individual rewards system as necessary.  Not going to lie, this is both really hard and essential.  Draw up a behavior contract, decide what the terms are going to be, and try to PRAISE OFTEN.  I have the most success with kids who think I am on their side.  Even for the kids whose behaviors are really annoying (like my little friend whose medicine wore off after lunch every day and tended to crawl under the table, where he would bark like a dog and yell out at classmates)...they need to know that you see them as a person, not a Problem Kid.  

5.) My thoughts on bribery offering positive incentives: Verbal praise is powerful.  Very powerful.  You do not have to spend tons of money on treasure box junk to get kids to behave for you.  Also, if you play up a reward and make it out to be the BEST THING EVER, they will fall for it.  I do spend money on prizes, but teeny-tiny ones....stickers and pencils, mostly.  Since we do PBIS at our school, we have a short Fun Friday time every Friday.  Often my co-teacher bakes something and we just have extra recess for the kids who can participate.  Sometimes we will do something a little more "fun" that relates to what we're learning about, such as making an edible map in Social Studies.  Either way, I would rather spend money on those activities than stuff from Oriental Trading.  For high-stakes situations where I think the promise of a bribe reward might be helpful (such as being quiet in the hall while other grades are testing), I will offer them ONE Skittle/M&M/Starburst (whatever's in the candy jar) as a given if they do what they're supposed to.  If you hold onto the good stuff for extra special occasions, it's really effective.  

BONUS #6 (I had one more thing to say): I take hallway behavior really seriously...it's probably vanity, but I don't want to be That Class...you know, the one other teachers look at with a pitying glance because the children are turning backflips down the hallway.  Last year I had "tickets" (really business cards) printed up on VistaPrint (but you could totally use regular tickets)...I look for two-three kids every day in the hall to give a tech ticket to.  They have to really impress me to get one, so they are all on their best behavior.

Here is what my tech tickets look like...they're not that cute, but the kids think they're amazing:

I made some tech tickets for anybody who might want something similar.  I left them kind of plain Jane, but you could print them out on neon paper to make them a little jazzier!  

Click here for them!

it's a bird, it's a plane, it's a blog!

Just trying this bloggity blogging thing out!  I finally sat down and created one, which I've been saying for MONTHS now that I was going to do.  I hope that this will be a blog shared with my fabulous co-teacher (who came up with the "inclusion fusion" subtitle) as a place where we can share our pictures, ideas, and maybe even a file or two.  I have learned SO much from other teachers' blogs.  I can say with all seriousness that I have learned more from blogs and Pinterest than all of the professional development I have had to sit through the last 7 years!

A little about me...my name is Melinda.  I teach first grade in Georgia now, although I started off my teaching career in the wonderful world of kindergarten.  I am working on my Master's degree in Reading/Language/Literacy...I am only two semesters in with several more to go, but when I'm finished I will have a K-12 degree in reading (which is pretty awesome).  I have an 18-month-old 19-month-old (wow, that milestone came up fast) and I have been married now for 5 years.  In what LITTLE free time I have, I play the piano, craft, and shop!  

I'm sure no one is going to read this for a while (who reads a blog in the beginning?!) but if you've scrolled up to read some earlier posts, welcome to my little corner of the blogosphere!