Can we talk about first days? What are you doing with your kids?

Normally I jump right into baseline assessments- but I suspect that I won't have many kids on Thursday because of the long weekend- I think many will wait till the following Monday. (I do hope I am wrong!)

So I'm just wondering what everyone else does. Last year I read the book "First Day Jitters" which was cute, but I have the same kids as last year and they are in 7th grade, so that might be a little too young for them anyway.

Re: Can we talk about first days? What are you doing with your kids?

Last year, I had my same kids as the year before and they were also in 7th grade.

I wanted to do more of a break the ice type activity since we had been apart the whole summer long. My kids also are in special ed and on a lower level (2nd/3rd grade) but you can easily tweak this to make it as hard as you like!

I printed out pictures of all different foods and the student came up front and I taped it to their backs. They had no idea what their food was and had to go around collecting hints from the other students and ultimately use their hints to guess their food. They just can't say outright "what food am I?" It must come from hints!

Ummmmm this is really hit or miss.. I got mad at some kids who cheated and it put a small damper on the game so just make sure you enforce before the game starts that they do NOT cheat- otherwise it's not fun and there's no point!!

You can use harder topics.. like literary characters from books you covered with them last year......etc.

Re: Can we talk about first days? What are you doing with your kids?

I also have 7th grade. I explain my rituals and routines to them, go through the supply list and my expectations of them for the year, we make class rules together, and I explain the important things in the room - noise meter, parking lot etc. On my second day with them I always do a genre sort from my library books and then they pick their first independent reading book.

I also usually have them write a little bit...I use the prompt, "Reading is the color __________ because" and have them explain what color it is...is it red because they hate it and it makes them angry, it is a sky blue because it's calming etc.

Re: Can we talk about first days? What are you doing with your kids?

Another break the ice activity: give the kids a handout with different summer activities and the kids have to go around the room and find another student who did the activity & have that person sign their name on the blank. For example: BLANK went camping this summer. So, the kids have to find someone who went camping & get their signature. Make sense?