I have been teaching lower grades for a long time but it still never ceases to amaze me how much the little ones change in just a couple of weeks. We had a very sweet day on our first day back, although I was very happy to exit the classroom at quitting time and head home for 2 days of rest and recharging! Today I'm popping in to share some of the New Year's activities we did on our first day back.
One of my favorite things to do on the first day of the new semester is some goal-setting. We talk about how we have half a year to work on mastering the things we know are important. For the last 3 or 4 years I've read the book Squirrel's New Year's Resolution. It is just the cutest little book to explain what a resolution is and to jump-start a conversation about our own goals for the New Year!
We brainstormed some things that might be good goals for first graders here at the beginning of 2nd semester. I asked them to think about 3 kinds of goals: reading goals, math goals, and "just-for-fun" goals. For reading and math, this year's class came up with things like "meet my AR goals," "learn all my sight words," "get really good at sounding out words," "finish learning my letter sounds," "learn my math facts," and "learn my numbers to 120." I always love reading their "just-for-fun" goals! This year a lot of kids said they want to learn to ride a bike without training wheels. I also had some kids who said they want to learn to cross the monkey bars or how to tie their shoes.
Now, we are a Leader In Me school so we actually have a goal-setting template in the kids' leadership notebooks. (Leadership notebooks are a new thing for my classroom this year and worth a separate blog post...I'm putting it on my to-do list!) As it so happens, the kids are supposed to set both academic and personal goals for themselves. They are called WIGS (Wildly Important Goals) and we have them at the school level, grade level, and individual student level. Since we already had that template in our notebooks, I let the kids do their initial thinking/brainstorming on that template.
Then we did something a little crafty and fun. We rewrote our goals on some bright colored paper and decorated New Year's hats...these are now on my door and out in the hall!
If you want the templates for these, they are in a FREEBIE download in my TPT store! There's also a free coloring sheet, easy reader, and read the room/write the room center.
Click any of the pics or the link to snag your free copy!
For math yesterday we didn't do math stations or some of our usual things...not on a Friday after break, haha! Instead we reviewed addition & subtraction and worked on some problem solving. Then we made some cute snowmen to add to our word problems and they are all also hanging in the hall! Didn't they turn out cute?!
This was SUCH an easy activity to do on our first day back. It's up in my TPT shop, too! I included both the word problems that I used with my own kids as well as editable versions.
You can click on the picture above or click here to check it out in my TPT shop!
Next week we will jump back in to our regular routine. I am really looking forward to second semester...for more than a few reasons! One, I LOVE how independent first graders are the second half of the year. The fall semester to me always feels like a little bit of an uphill struggle. After Christmas, though, they come back ready with longer attention spans and with more skills, so we can really rock and roll in reading and math! Some of my favorite units come up in the winter months, too-penguins, Jan Brett, black history, groundhogs....so much good content to teach! And on a personal note, I am going out on maternity leave in March and I'm excited about the changes for our little family.
Hope everyone had a great holiday season and feels well rested as they head back into their normal routine!
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