My Second First Day!

Today was the first day of my second year of teaching! Go me!

We had a half day, and it went AMAZINGLY well. Like, I was boggled as to what was happening in my classroom. They got a little squirrely in the last hour or so, but they're essentially all BFFs who haven't seen each other in a few months... so I wasn't too tough on them. :)

We started Daily Five today, and it went crazy well. Last year when I tried to launch D5, we read to ourselves for 17 seconds on the first day.

17. Seconds.

Today I actually had to stop them at 3 minutes! I almost died. I told them afterwards that I was AMAZED and I couldn't believe what was happening, haha! Then we walked down the hall in complete silence with our hands behind our backs and our bubbles in our mouths.

It wasn't all perfect! I did forget to collect their supplies, which led to general craziness at dismissal time. We enjoyed some Jitter Juice (courtesy of Abby), which was very fun!

 But it was a little too unstructured for us on the first day.  I'm sure it's just the way I taught it, because it was super fun and the activities were awesome! I learned quickly that we need lots of structure in my class. And that's cool, I can work with it. :)

So, tomorrow's another day! We're launching Writer's Workshop (which is new for all of us) and learning the 3 ways to read a book! And some math stuff too. :)

Question for ya - tomorrow we have our Technology special, but our Tech teacher isn't coming in. I want to take my class to the computer lab just to get us into the routine. Any thoughts on what we can do while we're there for 30 minutes?

First Day: Done!

Today was the first day of my first year of teaching!!!

Overall, I'd say it went well. Not perfect, but good enough considering that it is only my first year!

We started the day off with magic playdough, courtesy of Jodi at The Clutter-Free Classroom. I was sure that my second-graders would see through the "magic" part, but they were convinced it was legit. My favorite quote of the day: "Will the magic ever die??" Haha! The playdough really came in handy for early finishers. I think they probably would have played quietly with it for the entire 3 hours that we were there today! Here it is, pre-magic.

We also made name mosaics (thanks, Fabulous Firsties, for the idea!). I combined this with a different name graphing idea I saw somewhere else. We read Chrysanthemum and talked about our different names and then did the activity. I'm not done with the display yet, so I will just show you my sample! If you choose to do this, and it was actually pretty easy to manage (so I'd recommend it), I suggest tearing paper into pieces instead of cutting it. Cutting tiny squares was taking me FOREVER, so I tore instead and I think they looked nice!

Then I took some more random pictures of my room. Here is my desk!

And here's a closeup of our class pets - African dwarf frogs! The kids are obsessed. One of these days we'll have to name them... no one asked today was their names were so I'm in the clear for a bit, haha.

These are our rules. I copied them straight from First Grader ... At Last, which was one of the first blogs I ever read! The kids really liked them although I think they might be too abstract for my students. We'll see how it goes.

 So overall, pretty good day. I need to work on a couple things with the kids, like not talking when I'm talking and staying in their spots while I'm teaching. But I have a good feeling. :) Thanks, blog-world, for all of your ideas and inspirations!! More pictures maybe tomorrow!