Live-Blogging My First Day Activities

This title is sort of a lie – I just finished making my first-day presentation / series of activities within the last hour. I want to remember what I was thinking as I made it, so here goes:

Things I was considering about the first day:

• What are the procedures that I’ll be doing for the rest of the year that I want them to see on the very first day?
• What kind of classroom culture do I want and how am I emphasizing it on day one?
• What are the things I just need to tell them on the first day?

Reflective Thought: I remember this whole process being totally stressful last year (which, btw, was my first year teaching, so I was doing all of this for the very first time). I think it had to do with two things. (1) I had just read the Harry Wong book and it freaked me out. I got the impression that if I don’t get these first few days PERFECT, then I’m screwed for the rest of the year. This isn’t true at all, although it helps to have some sort of significant break in the middle of the first quarter so you can have a better second-chance first day.

Here’s the more interesting thing: when I was a first year teacher, I had no idea what procedures I would be using the rest of the year. I had so many plans and no concept of which ones would stick. Looking back at the presentation I gave last year, I gave each person in the group a role (recorder, organizer, material manager, etc) – something that’s completely reasonable if I’m going to use group roles the rest of the year. But… I didn’t. That’s absolutely something I abandoned. I think that’s where so much of my stress from my first year came from – I didn’t want to introduce something and say “we’re doing this!”, and then have it fall by the wayside – I lose the trust of my students when I do that. This is also why I think I feel so much more comfortable this year – I know myself better as a teacher, so I know which routines I’m going to be doing every day and which ones can wait a week to be emphasized. There’s no way I could’ve known this my first year. So to all the first year teachers: if you’re stressing out about your first day, maybe it’s because you don’t want to promise things that eventually fall apart. And that’s absolutely honorable, but (maybe) unavoidable. Just take comfort that next year, it should be easier – and not in that intangible way that some teachers say ‘the second year is easier – it just is’ – but because you know your routines and you’re confident that the ones you do on the first day are ones that matter.

Anyway – my answers to those questions above:

• Procedures: Bellwork, Exit Tickets, Attention Signal, Hand Signals (thumbs up/down, fist-to-five), Cold Calling/Pull Names from Cups
• Culture: Talk to the people next to you, math every day, high expectations for participation, work bell-to-bell, classroom norms (Respect & Effort)
• Need to Know: Classroom Rules, where they sit, information about me, a syllabus

So – if possible – I want my first day to have all of these things!

Below: An outline of my first day and some of my materials. I’m happy – I think I hit my goal.

An Outline of my First Day:

Action: I greet students at the door but tell them to line up at the back wall by birthday month and day. Reason: get them to talk to each other

Action: Give an arithmetic problem – students raise their hand if they have the answer – if correct, they and a partnet choose their seat. Reason: We do math every day, even the first day, even first thing. Now you know where you sit. Source: Dan Meyer.

Action: Put bellwork on the board. There’s a time limit. The questions involve talking to your neighbor. Reason: Introduce bellwork routine, get them to know their neighbor

Action: Go over bellwork by cold calling / pulling popsicle sticks. Reason: Yes – I’m going to call on you randomly. And expect an answer. Get used to it.

Action: Introduce myself. Reason: to introduce myself and model the next activity where they introduce themselves to each other in a similar way.

Action: Give them my Group Personality worksheet. There are four corners – in each corner, they put something that it unique to that person. In the center, they put something every person in the group has in common. Reason: Get to know your group.

Action: As they do this, walk around to each group and fill in my seating chart template. Monitor groups and model respect and participation. After the first pass, go back through and pass out a personal survey to be completed before the end of class. Reason: Create my seating chart, learn names, show groups that if I give an activity then I expect everyone to participate

Action: Regroup using my transition signal. Practice a few times if necessary Reason: Now you know my transition signal.

Action: Hey – did you notice how smooth that was? How respectful we all were? How we were participating. I want this to be what you expect from this class – what becomes normal in here. This leads into our class norms: respect and effort. Reason: Hey, notice how you were doing a specific activity and then I generalized it to something bigger? I’m going to do that a lot. Also, now you know what’s expected of you.

Action: Here are the class rules. Reason: You need to know them.

Interlude – Norms & Rules. This last summer, I stumbled into a speech about norms versus rules that I really liked and will try to repeat tomorrow. It goes something like this: there are things in this classroom that I will consistently enforce – you can bet on it. These are the rules – they are specific. They are measurable. I can point to you and say ‘you are breaking this rule’. And then there are things that are bigger than rules – things that we can feel but have a hard time identifying. Things that you can expect when you enter this room – that become normal. These are bigger ideas – harder to define – things like respect or integrity or perseverance. There are a lot of small things that encourage these attitudes, and there’s a lot of small things that discourage them. I don’t want to try and list all of them. Instead, I want us to call these our class norms. They’re harder to define than a rule, but they’re also more important than a rule. I’m expecting your behavior to fall in line with these norms until it becomes completely normal for you to behave this way in this room (and, hopefully, outside of it too). End speech.

My two norms are respect and effort. Over the summer when I had a smaller class and an amazing camp culture, I had groups of 3 come up with individual behaviors that they thought were important and share them with the class. Big surprise – they were all things like “respect the people around you”, “listen when someone is talking”, “help each other out” – things like that. From there, we generalized each of those specific behaviors into our classroom norms, which is when I gave the speech about the difference between individual actions and statements about culture. In my high-needs public school where I don’t have as much buy-in from my students, I’m not confident enough to do this yet. End Interlude

Action: Are we finished with the survey (thumbs)? If not, how many more minutes (show on hands)? Reason: Yes – you need to participate with your hands. Everyone.

Action: As students finish, hand out the syllabus. Have them underline phrases they are confused by and circle phrases they think are important. Reason: Active reading skills foreshadow some of our problem-solving strategies, and they need to know this info

Action: End class with an exit ticket with questions that can be answered from the syllabus. Reason: Exit ticket procedure and hold them accountable for the info on the syllabus.

That’s it. Here’s the SMART presentation I’ll be giving at the same time.

All Resources in one place:
Group Activity
Personal Questionnaire
Syllabus
Seating Chart Template

Disclaimer: This works for me because everything I do is based in some procedure or classroom culture norm that is important to me. If you and I are the same teacher, maybe you can steal all of this. If not, then you’ll probably need to adjust – it doesn’t make sense for you to use an exit ticket if you’ll never use it again the rest of the year. I’ve really liked reading a lot of first-day procedures for ideas on activities, but at the end of the day, I needed to decide what things reinforce the things I’ll continue to do throughout the year and what things would just end up being transient.

Happy Blogging