Skip to main content

First Week of School 2019!

This was an eventful first week of school!

(Warning - This is kind of picture heavy)

Monday was our district back to school event, and for the first time since I've been there, we were free to go to our rooms for the majority of the day. It was amazing, and I was very fortunate in that the event is always at my school site so I didn't have to leave to anywhere to get stuff done.


Free to work in our rooms!

Awesome tumbler with our district logo. It was filled with snacks and a healthy energy drink mix.
Talked with my team about how we can use these awesome clips from Target so I went and bought 10 packs


We were supposed to get bulletin board but they won't be in for a month. My coworker had the great idea to hang posters on a clothesline to be able to easily remove them when the boards come in.
I also changed my Becoming the Math Teacher You Wish You Had posters and taped them to my door. The other posters are on magnets because the edges of the window are metal.

I didn't do too much decorating other than that. The majority of my time at school was spent organizing my supplies and student supplies. I labeled everything after organizing it so that hopefully my life will be easier.
Student corner. Group supplies in the bins on the left, turn in bins, absent work, Bump It! Game Supplies, Chromebook chargers,  and my puzzle/brain break cart.

My board for agenda. I added one of the puzzles that Sarah Carter  to the board in front of the extra student supplies
Extra student supplies



My desk corner. I realized after taking this picture that I printed the wrong group roles poster.
Teacher supplies, mostly organized and labeled.
New this year: golf pencils for students to borrow when needed, and an inbox for anything students are giving to me that is not an assignment. Hopefully this will keep my desk more clutter free.
The first two student days went really well. I tried out an activity for students to find their seats that was mentioned by two other teachers in my hall. It was surprisingly difficult for students and many, many students kept asking me where they sit if their birthday is in "x month." I also did the second activity on Friday where they line up by name which went a bit easier but  a lot of students still struggled.
Image
Most of my slides for the first day of school. Spent time talking about myself and showing students the pictures of the classroom so they know where to find everything.

For the second year I used Sara Van Der Werf's 100 numbers activity and it went very well. I had quite a few students who did this last year with me and they couldn't remember exactly how it worked so it was good to use again. 
 Overall it was a great week back to school!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How I Plan & Reflect

I've tried a lot of different methods for planning & reflecting on my plans over the years, and I'm still trying to figure it out. Last year I used the Happy Planner for Teachers , and I loved it because there are a lot of stickers and I could add my own pages, basically customize it however I wanted. But, it was very large and I ended up not using it a few months into the school year. So Pretty So Unused I'm still very tempted by the new packages they have for teacher planners but am holding firm in not buying it because it will cause guilt and shame when it falls out of use. I did get a Passion Planner to keep track of time sensitive things, and am going to give myself a bit more grace about not filling it out. It'll be more personal/to do listy than lesson planning. So shiny! Mostly blank the week before school starts. There's things I need to add but shh let's ignore that right now I'm ALSO going to be using  Common Curricul

Math Professional Workshops

 I am very fortunate that my school district invests in training teachers. For the past two school years, we have had optional  professional workshops in the winter and summer. There are multiple days with choices available for different grade levels. Last year, they were all separated by grade band. This year, there's more overlap between the grade levels on different days. So yesterday was 3-6, today was 4-6, and tomorrow is 6-8. I didn't realize that I could have also gone yesterday, but it worked out anyway because yesterday was my own kids' first day of the second semester.  I am so glad they made the switch, because previously there was minimal involvement from people at my middle school, and we are the only middle school in the district. So today I got to work with not just teachers from my school, but from all of the elementary schools. It always helps to have additional perspectives from both sides. It also helps that everyone who was there signed up to be there. E

Planning for Back to School August 2020

Me in my laundry room/office This year has been so different from any other years. SO much uncertainty.  I wanted to be super prepared so I read many, many books and articles and Twitter lists over the summer. I participated in webinars and Zoom meetings and tried to put what I found in one place but my brain doesn't really work that way, so I have some stuff in Google Keep, some stuff in Wakelet, some stuff written down. In the end I still felt unprepared for the first day of school. I have had so much anxiety in the last few days. I did set up assignments for my students before the first day of school. I used Howie Hua's  Math Autobiography  slides, and some of my students started working on them immediately. It's already creating amazing discussions and bonding between my students. The first day of school went well for me. I didn't plan much, I just shared a couple of slides about myself and then had my students do a community circle . It worked out well because it l