#mtboschallenge Week 4: Day 1 of School

This is Week 4 of the #mtboschallenge on twitter.  The challenge is to blog once a week for the remainder of 2014.  Each Saturday there will be a different prompt shared to blog about.  The prompt will be shared prior to Saturday on twitter using #mtboschallenge  You can link up on my blog (or any other blog that shares the link up). Also share your blog post on twitter with #mtboschallenge .  You can copy the following graphic into your blog post.  Each Sunday @druinok from  Teaching Statistics will host a 3-2-1 Summary prompt where you can blog about anything you choose.  We really hope you join the challenge!

The prompt for this week is to blog about your first day or week of school.  Please check all the blogs that link up and leave comments.  If you started school earlier and already posted about your first day or week feel free to link that post.

Tuesday Sept 2nd was our first day of school this year for students.  We started the day with a 2 hour orientation period with our first hour students.  I had told my students and parents at Back to School Night that I would provide breakfast for the students.

We went through all the apples and four bags of donuts.  These kids were hungry!

This was our schedule for the day.  During the orientation period we went over lots of information in the student handbook, watched a few short informational videos that were created by students, and had a station where we went to the cafeteria/playground and our administrators filled the students in on how the lunch lines work in the cafeteria and other important expectations.

Day 1 Bell Schedule.

During my 30 min math classes that day we started out with introductions.  I introduced myself and then I had the students tell me their name and if they prefer use a nickname.  I had them tell us what elementary school they came from and they had the option to describe their day so far in one word.  To not put pressure on anyone I told them they could pass on giving the one word description and nobody did!  Popular words were confusing, fun, and stressful.  I came up with the one word idea at the last second and I really loved it.

After introductions we got started on my first day post-it prompt activity.  This is my third year doing this and it's still one of my favorite things.  I was cracking up when I saw the first two posters during my first hour.  I told students to put the post-its on the posters and they ended up making an array, I told them I loved the array, but they could put the post-its anywhere on the poster.  They got a little more footloose and fancy free with the last two posters.

Love the arrays they started.

They got a little crazy on the last two.  LOL

Do you just love the boxes full of consumable texts on the floor?  Yes they drove me crazy all week, but I am happy to report that as of yesterday during Homebase, boxes are all gone.  There are piles of Volume 1 books ready to hand out next week and the Volume 2 books are now boxed up and stored away until we need them when we start Chapter 9.  I felt like I was running a little sweatshop, with the kids unpacking, separating, and repacking books frantically.  My Homebase is full of great helpers and most students didn't have much homework to be working on yet so it worked out well. I try to never do myself what students can help do.

Students in action.

Here are the completed posters. When I do this activity.  I pass out a pack of post-its at each table with four per student.  Then each student writes a response to each prompts.  When everyone at the table is finished with the prompt ONE person collects them and puts them on the poster.  That way I only have six students at the posters at a time.  It's much more controlled than every student getting up and putting their own post-it on each poster.

I used the same four prompts as last year and these posters are the same ones I used last year (I laminated them).  I kept those up the entire school year, but this year I will need to space for anchor charts I create so they won't be up all year.

The students definitely enjoy this activity and I don't want to overload them with information on day one because they have already had the two hour orientation session full of information.

Lots of responses of FUN this year.

Always so impressed with their responses to this prompt.

Always laugh when they put "Teaching Us" 

Growth mindset!

Completed posters on my side board.  I have magnets on the back of them.

The finished product.

Day 1 went great this year.  The students were sweet, respectful and fun.  I have blog posts planned for Day 2- Workshop Introduction, Day 3- Carnival Bears (problem solving), and Day 4- The Marshmallow Challenge (team building).

My first week is over and it was fun, exciting, and exhausting.  I know it's going to be another great year because I can already tell how awesome my students are.  This weekend I need to spend some time going over my first lessons for Carnegie and figuring out how to incorporate growth mindset in my classroom.  Hope everyone had a wonderful first (or beyond) week.

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An InLinkz Link-up

The Marshmallow Challenge, a Great Team Building Exercise

I am on Spring Break this week and have been going through my Blog Post Drafts.  I came across this empty post that was titled Day4- The Marshmallow Challenge.  On the fourth day with my students this school year I did a team building exercise called "The Marshmallow Challenge" that I had read about on Twitter.  I decided that this would be the perfect activity for team building as we transitioned to math workshop this year in our 7th grade math classes.

Somewhere I took photos of the students working, but I am on my second new iPhone since then and I must not have been using the cloud when I took them.  I will have to ask my husband when he gets home from work today if he can locate those photos.  August/September seems to be missing at the moment.  If I locate the photos I will be sure to add them to this post.

I created this Google Presentation and we used the Workshop format of Opening, MiniLesson, Work Time, and Sharing/Reflection to have the students get used to the structure of what workshop looks like.  The students absolutely loved it!  I cannot even begin to explain how creative they were and how amazed I was how well they worked as teams on Day 4 of school.  Students will still ask me when we can do something fun like The Marshmallow Challenge again.

I figured out how to embed my Google Presentation thanks to a nice tutorial video I found online. Here it is:

I hope this post is helpful to you.  I cannot emphasize enough how well this activity worked with my students.  They really worked on team building while completing one of their favorite activities of the year.  Not a bad way to start the year.  You could use this activity at any time.  If you do please come back and comment on who it went.  I would love to hear about your Marshmallow Challenge.  If you would like me to share with you the google presentation I made leave a comment below telling me how you plan on using this and make sure to leave your email address.  UPDATE 6/19/15:  I will not be emailing anyone the link anymore.  Here is the direct link to the Marshmallow Challenge Google Presentation for anyone who wants to use it.  Enjoy!   UPDATE 9/4/14:  I am sharing this with everyone, but getting MANY MANY delivery failure notifications with the emails people are posting.  I have no idea why this is happening nor how to fix it.  If you don't receive an email with the google presentation link it is because of this and I'm sorry about that.

First Day of School

Click here to see my First Day of School 2014

I put up the same locker signs as I have in the past letting the students know I would be providing them breakfast for the first day (I informed them and their parents of this on Back To School Night). This group grazed on the donuts and muffins throughout our two hour orientation period.

Adorable napkins from Target dollar spot

Just to give you a little background on how we run our first day in 7th grade, we follow our bell schedule, but keep them the first two hours for orientation (normally 1st and 2nd period).  Encore hours are 3, 4, and 7 and we keep them the same so those teachers don't get cheated out of time the 1st day.  During our normal core hours of 5 and 6 we split them in half so we can do a 30 min class with each of our four core classes (normally hours 1, 2, 5, and 6).  Then we finish the day with a 20 min Homebase period which is like a study resource period.

My orientation time went great.  I have an awesome group of 1st hour accelerated math students.  We had lots of information to get through and they did a great job staying focused.  I had the students highlight their class schedules because we follow an A/B schedule for some encore classes.  They highlighted all A day classes one color and all B day classes a different color.  The hours where the colors mixed were the classes they have every day.  I then encouraged them to highlight their various classrooms on the map located on the back of their schedule.  I told them to write in the class hour and A, B, or E if they have a class everyday.  I never realized how confusing an A/B day schedule can be for 7th graders until my own son came through the middle school and I saw first hand how much these brand new 7th graders had to remember.  The layout of our school also confuses most people so imagine how it is for a a new 7th grader already feeling overwhelmed.

This year I decided to follow the same First Day Plan as I did last year because it went so well and I really loved the feedback I got from my students and I did not bore them to death with policies and procedures. This is what I did during my 30 min math classes.  We were short on time and did not even attempt "either or" that from the linked plans.  Well you know they saying about even the best laid plans...

I can relate was not what I would call a bomb, more like a fizzle, as in something I expected to go so well and was more like meh.  Overall I would say about 60% of the students completely got the concept, jumped right in, and kept the activity flowing.  The other 40% either were not completely clear on the concept or they just could not find ANYTHING to relate to another person about.  I mean who hasn't gone swimming or eaten some type of food for that matter.  It took much longer than it should have/I had planned for.  I think maybe we will revisit the activity again once students know each other a bit better.  It wasn't a total bust, but much bumpier than last year for sure.

Because I can relate took so long I adjusted in the afternoon and started with the Post-It note activity because I really wanted the feedback and I really wanted the students to feel they have a voice from Day 1.  I color coded the post-its I handed out by class hour so when looking at the comments I can easily see visually which hour they are from.

I changed up some of the prompts from last year

• Our classroom should be ____ everyday
• Math is important because...
• Mrs. Nackel can be most helpful by...
• This will be my best year of math because...

I loved the last prompt which was new this year.  I told my students that we are going to aim for the sky this year or "reach for the stars" Like my big banner says so I wanted them to think for a moment about what they will do different (or the same) to make this their best year of math.  Got some great feedback on that one.  I cannot emphasize enough how much I LOVE reading the reponses to the these and how much I learn about my students.

I have to say I had another awesome first day.  I did let the students sit wherever they wanted and this group is far too chatty for that right now.  Other years it has worked, but we have really big classes this year so we need to start with a teacher made seating chart.  I hope all you teachers out there had a wonderful first day!

Favorite First Day Activities

To see my post click on First Day of School 2014

To see my post click on First Day of School 2013.

I had a wonderful first day of school this year.  Things went just as I planned and I think my students enjoyed a couple new to them, getting to know you activities and of course no homework the first day. Things have been going very well, although all the technology issues that I have to troubleshoot with our new PCs are enough to drive me to the brink of a Technology induced Armageddon.

Today I am going to share my favorite new first day activities.  I posted my First Day Plan previously so you can click on that to see an explanation for what we did.  Today I am recapping how things went and sharing a few photos with you.

1)  I can relate.  This went really well and some classes had a much more interesting chain of answers than others.  One class ended up being several "I can relate because I have a dog" and another was "I can relate because I have cousins".  I think next year I will tell them that two people max can say the same thing and then we have to move on to another topic.  I have some kids that struggled to give an answer, but we kind of helped them along.  Overall it was fun, the kids enjoyed it, and I will definitely do it again.

2)  Post-It Note Activity.  I LOVED this!  I ended up buying the small post-it notes for my classes because I have 100+ students and I knew the 3x3 would not fit on a large poster.  It worked wonderfully.  I gave each class hour a different color post-it because then I figured I could track the answers by class hour.  I am glad I did it this way, and the poster ended up being very colorful.  I passed out four post-it notes to each person and then we filled one poster at a time.  I would read the statement/question and then one person per group would bring the post-its up and place them on the poster.  The kids enjoyed the movement.

The four completed Post-It posters.

What will Mrs. Nackel need to do to help you this year?

Our classroom should be _____ everyday.

My goal for math this year is...

Math is important because...

It was really fun to read through the answer and get a quick idea of what the kids think.  The two top answers for "Our classroom should be ____ everyday" were clean and quiet.  Clean was the overwhelming answer.  LOL The kids are on the same wavelength as me for sure.  :)

3)  I think we only had time to do either or in one class.  It was pretty interesting to see their choices.  This is an activity I will definitely use throughout the year.  My favorite choices were fractions or decimals, algebra or geometry, and textbooks or computers.  It was fun.

I had a great first day and really loved the the new activities we did.  They are all keepers for next year.

First Day of School Butterflies

I'm talking about myself, not the kids.  Although I am sure many of them do have butterflies.  I packed my lunch last night.  Starting off the year packing lot of veggies, as well as, hummus and spinach dip.  I also have my leftover pasta from lunch at Carraba's yesterday so I will definitely not go hungry today.

I bought blueberry mini muffins, powdered sugar donuts, and juice boxes for my 1st hour students who will be with me the first two hours for orientation.  I started doing this a few years ago and I think it's a nice welcome for the students, who are new to our building.

Hopefully I will not lose my voice from all the talking I seem to have to do for orientation.  And hopefully my feet will withstand me standing on them all day.

My plan for my shortened math classes (30 min) today is to

• Play "I can relate".  My names is _____  and I went to  (previous school) and I can related because...
• Do  a Post-It Note welcome activity like this.
• Play either/or with math terms, like "geometry or algebra"  "fractions or decimal" "protractor or ruler"  I seriously thought this up between waking up and setting my snooze button this morning.  I thought it was a brilliant idea to do it with math terms which might give us some interesting conversation.

Today there will be no seating charts.  I will try my best to personally say hello and welcome every student into my classroom.  No homework or information sheets will be filled out.  My two main goals for the day are to have everyone see 1)  my classroom as a fun and safe place to learn 2) me as a kind and caring teacher who will take them on an amazing educational journey this year.  I will sneak in a reminder about supplies that are needed, but that is it!

As the saying goes, "you only have one chance to make a first impression" and I want to make a great one!

Happy Back to School everyone!  Can't wait to fill you in on how my first day goes and finally share photos of my finished classroom (if I can get some space on my phone)

Welcoming Students to a New School

Our middle school is only grades 7-8 due strictly to space issues (otherwise we would most likely have 6th graders at the middle school).  Because the 7th graders are brand new to middle school we want to make sure that they feel comfortable and welcome at their new school.  One of the things I do to ease anxiety is provide breakfast for students on their very first day.  I let them and their parents know this at open house.  Some students are too nervous to eat breakfast the morning of the first day so I let them know I have breakfast covered.

I usually bring in donuts or granola bars and juice for the kids.  They love it and it sets the tone for the year of an inviting classroom.  I also make locker signs so when students show up that first day they can look for their sign (which helps them find their lockers).

These are the welcome signs I copied for my incoming 7th graders this fall.

The font is Cupid de Locke.

I should add that I do not do this for all 115 students of mine.  I just do this for my first hour class, which is the class that comes to me right away the first day of school for orientation.  What special things do you do to welcome your students the first day?

Number activity for first day

I teach 7th grade math and so the first day of school can be a bit chaotic to say the least.  We always have a special bell schedule for the first day of school and our academic class times end up being shortened.  I would say that class ends up being about 20 minutes instead of the normal 55 min.  I teach four sections of math (3 regular and 1 accelerate) and I like to be consistent in what we do the first few days of school for all four classes.

A few years ago, I decided to switch up my first day game plan.  My students see seven different teachers on the first day of school and I can only imagine how overwhelming that is and how these kids are on information overload.  Students are new to our building in 7th grade and the first day all they are worried about is getting lockers opened and not getting lost.  Due to nervousness I don't know how much they are actually "listening" to what teachers are saying.

Firs Day lesson plans from last year.

For this reason I like to get them up and moving around the classroom.  I also like to have an easy and nonthreatening activity where students can participate and get to know each other in a safe and fun manner.  After a quick and fun SMARTBoard warm-up, a brief discussion on supplies needed and quick introductions, I start asking a series of questions and students move to the number that applies to them.  I actually got this idea from one of our inservice activities and adapted it for my classroom.  It was a great way to get to know more about other teachers and everyone seemed to enjoy it (and that says a lot for an inservice activity!)

The numbers 0-12+ are posted around the perimeter of my room.

A sample list of questions:

~How many pets do you have? (then I go around and ask them to tell us about them, kids love a chance to talk about their pets)

~How old are you?  (you find out the age range of your students)

~How many siblings do you have?

~What is your birth order? (this is always interesting)

~What is the month of your birthday?

~How many extracurriculars do you participate in? (sports, dance, band, academic things )  Again the kids love to tell me about how they spend their free time.  This can also clue you in to who your introverts might be.

If I did some recording of the information we could use it to make graphs.  I have never done that before, but it could be a way to extend this activity.  

This could be easily adapted for any age student.  I can see it working really well with younger students. You may decide to adapt the number range and change up questions.  

This is really the perfect easy and fun activity to start with on the first day.  I get to know way more about my students and they get a break from a day of sitting and listening to teachers bore them with information overload.

I am linking up to Fun in First's Blog.  I have a feeling most ideas will be for primary grades, but hopefully I can find something to adapt for my math class.