Week One Thoughts

 

The first week of school is in the books!  In my class, the first few days of school are largely devoted to establishing routines and building a community in the classroom.  Here are some of my Week One highlights:

Note: Many of these activities are found in The First Six Weeks of School, a publication from the Northeast Foundation for Children, one of the prime movers of the Responsive Classroom approach.  

The Colored Dot Game
We start the very first moments of the year off with a game!  As the students enter the classroom, I place one of four different colored dot stickers on each of the students' heads (I have 16 students, so four colors works perfectly.  In other years, I've had to use different amounts of colors).  Then, I challenge them to find the other people in the class with the same color dot they have...without talking.  The students are able to do this fairly quickly, and it's great to see how they help each other find their specific groups.  This activity is also one of many that requires the students to form and re-form groups that I do throughout the week, which gets them used to sitting with a wide variety of classmates.


Practicing Recess
Over the first few days, the entire fifth grade goes outside several times to "practice" recess.  This serves several purposes.  First, it enables the kids to see that our Code of Conduct is in effect even in places where they are not being directly supervised.  We ask the students how they can be kind, cooperative, responsible, and in control of their words and actions at recess.  Second, the games we play focus on teamwork and cooperation, which enhance the sense of community and trust that we are striving to build in our classrooms.  Third, it's a way to expose students to new games that they would then be able to play on their own when they are out at recess "for real." 

Playing "Octopus Tag" on the basketball courts

Playing "Smaug's Jewels" on the field

Guided Discovery
Guided Discovery is a method for introducing materials that will be used in the classroom.  A Guided Discovery is meant to generate interest and excitement about the resources in classroom and help

children explore their possible uses. Guided Discovery also provides opportunities to introduce vocabulary, assess children’s prior knowledge, and teach responsible use and care
of materials.  On Wednesday, we worked with multilink cubes and pattern blocks, which are two tools we will be using in math this year.  The students enjoyed practicing working with these tools and even came up with some novel uses!





Hopes and Dreams
Students will have input as we create the rules for our classroom together.  We began the first steps this week.  The students created maps of their classrooms from last year, including symbols that represented something they enjoyed, something that was hard or unpleasant, and something that they would like to get better at.  

Students creating their classroom maps

Students pair share their completed maps

After the maps were completed, students sat in pairs and shared their maps with each other.  There was a lot of discussion, especially about the things they wanted to get better at!  This conversation led to a whole-class meeting about our hopes and goals for the year.  Finally, students wrote and illustrated a paragraph about an important hope or goal they have for this year, including how they think they will accomplish it, and also how other people can help them acccomplish it.  These hopes and goals form the basis for when we create our rules. 

Next week, we will begin phasing in some more academics, including math instruction as well as getting up and running with Reading and Writing Workshop.  I can't wait!

-Mr. Ullman