The First Two Days

So, it is official. We are now into our third day of school tomorrow. So far it hasn't been all that bad. This year we are on a new schedule since our school day changed. We used to have two days where we would support struggling students after school in ELA and Math. We really found that the extended day wasn't helping the struggling students because they were exhausted by 2:40. We now changed our day from ending at 2:40 to 3:05. We built the extra help into our daily schedule and now all students are serviced from 8:20 - 3:05. It's been a very difficult transition especially for our new first graders who had lunch last year at 11:00 and now because of the schedule change they have to eat at 12:30. That's INSANE! As a parent I'd be furious. Especially since we are not allowed to give snack. Basically from 11:00 - 12:25 I have a very whiny class who really isn't learning much but how to complain for 90 minutes. We are going to get through this week but if this continues to happen and they do not adjust then I'm going to push to have a working snack for my students where they can work and eat. How can I be upset with them when I'm starving by 11:00 and I eat breakfast. There is absolutely no food in the classroom which stinks that I can't munch on pretzels or something. I'm not sure what's going to be done but all the first grade teachers are experiencing the same issue.

Anyway, yesterday we read First Day Jitters, had Jitter Juice, wrote about ourselves in writing and then graphed how we felt on the first day of school in Math. I did this lesson last year and I really liked it. I gave my students circles and they drew how they felt on the face. They had to choose from happy, sad, angry, nervous, and excited. I think they really did an awesome job. For the most part they were all happy and they all came back today so I didn't scare them off. I do have one student who I can see already is going to need a lot of help staying on track academically and behaviorally. I hope we get him a para ASAP because I'm realizing I can't take my eyes off him for 2 seconds.

Today in writing my students worked on drawing about themselves. I taught them that good writers choose topics to write about (people, places, things). This month our mentor author is Joy Cowley. I think she gives students amazing ideas of topics to write about. She has great humor and such cute characters in her stories. I've really grown to love her in the last year. I gave my kids a blank t-shirt template to draw pictures about themselves. Tomorrow they are going to write about one thing on their shirt that is special to them. This is going up on our bulletin board this month. I will take a picture when it's finished. Hope everyone had a great first few days back. Summer is just around the corner.

Tomorrow is the 12th anniversary of 9/11. I have this amazing view from my couch that reminds me what an amazing city I live in. I'm truly fortunate.

First Day Jitters Activity

So the first day of school for NYC is upon us. On Monday I plan to read "First Day Jitters" by Julie Danneberg. I taught this lesson last year but I vamped it up this year with more questions for my students. I also found this really cute poem for "Jitter Juice" I plan to give my kids. I saw a lot of recipes that had soda in it and I'm not really comfortable giving that to them since we promote healthy eating at our school. So instead I'm going to mix lemonade or orange juice with seltzer water using equal parts. I created a powerpoint that goes along with the story using a venn diagram to compare how teachers and students got ready for the first day, leveled questioning and follow up activities to do in class. I believe this lesson can really be stretched out over 2 days if you really put some thought into it. You can find my lesson here on my TpT store.