Before the First Days of School

-
Related image
Before the first days of school...

 You’ve just graduated or decided that you want to teach after a few (or many) years of doing something else. 

 You start collecting materials that you thin that you will and begin the waiting game.

 You wait for what seems like an eternity (for some it may only be a couple of days) for an opportunity to get into your classroom and decorate.

 You finally get in and let the decorating process begin! Some do elaborate themes, paint furniture, some order posters from TpT or Amazon, and some borrow posters from others. What ever your method, taking the time to make your classroom inviting and rich with content relate materials is an important aspect of teaching. Because that’s what students look at when they tune you out. Inevitably, a kid will lose focus and start looking around the room, at least if you have encouraging words or content related materials they will have something educational to look at.After your classroom is decorated, whether it is decorated a little or a lot, you may think that you are done and all that you have to do is wait for the kids to arrive. 

 However, this is not the case, this is where the real heavy lifting begins.The following are things that you will have to do before school starts in order to effectively facilitate the chaos of your new classroom. These are items that people often forget to tell new teachers until right before the students enter their class. Hopefully, this post will inform you of the items that you need to complete so that you can ask your mentor or any veteran teacher about them.
  • Syllabus: This is a document that provides all of your contact information and lets student and parents know what to expect. This includes your email address, a work phone number where they can reach you (or at the very least leave a message), your class schedule, classroom expectations and procedures, grading policies, brief overview of the content that will be covered, a materials list and any other pertinent information.
  • Website: This is an electronic version of your syllabus that can be updated regularly. You (or your administration) can determine how often you want to update this—once a year or weekly. But be mindful of the fact that it looks bad if parents go to your website in December and it is evident that you were updating the website weekly but haven’t changed anything since the fourth week of school (in case you’re wondering, that’s when things start to get real).
  • Lesson Plans: You may or may not need lesson plans for the first week of school (there a lot of factors that go into this, most importantly: if your administration wants them and if you need them in order to execute an interactive and effective first week of school). But, whether you type them up or not, you need a plan for how to begin the first days of school. How will you introduce yourself and begin building your relationship with the students? How will you learn about the students and begin building relationships with them? How will you introduce/reinforce/model your rules and procedures? Finally, how will you find ways to give your students voice and choice during this critical time?

 Whew! I know that is a lot! And some of it you may not have thought about before, however, I hope that this list will help you be better prepared for the school year. These items should rank high on your priority list, they are definitely items that will help you to facilitate the chaos in your classroom.

What other things do you feel belong on this list?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Questioning Techniques: Questions that Extend Responses

-
Image
  Posing the right questions to students is one of the most important techniques that can be used when teaching and assessing students.  Your questioning techniques can expose misconceptions, uncover gaps in learning, cause students to look deeper at a topic, encourage a higher depth of knowledge, and provide students with opportunities to make connections between many different topics.     Because questioning is a topic that has many different levels , I am going to HAVE to spread the techniques that I use over several different posts...Hopefully these posts will come quick and in successive order, however, due to my tremendously busy schedule and A.D.D. (undiagnosed and I which that I had even a slight case of hyperactivity as an adult) I am not sure if this will be the case... This first questioning techniques post will be about questions that require students to extend their responses .  As a math teacher, it is easy to fall into the habit of ...
Read more

Classroom Management Strategies

-
Image
picture credit Classroom management is an important aspect in teaching students.   For those who manage adults, being an effective people manager is important also.   Although the intended audience of this post is classroom teachers, many of these strategies can be used to manage adults, also. Here are some strategies that I have used in my classroom to manage student behavior: Stand at the classroom door greeting and talking to students as they enter into the classroom .   This can alert you to any student issues before the students enter your classroom.   If you notice that a student is having an issue, talk with them and try to get it resolved or diffuse it before it becomes a larger issue.   Constantly monitor and circulate around the room as a way to be proactive in your classroom management.   As mentioned earlier, becoming aware of an issue before it becomes an even bigger issue will cut down on management issues. Circulating aro...
Read more

Integer War

-
Image
                           Picture Source Here is a fun game that I have used in the past that is quick and gives students tons of practice adding integers.  This card game is an interactive way to reinforce the addition of integers .   It can also be modified to reinforce subtraction and multiplication.  The kids love it and I love watching them enjoy integers (for a change).  What I enjoy most of all is beating the student who has beaten all of the other students in the class and has an inflated ego.    Materials: Deck (or stack) of playing cards for each pair of students Rules: • Students should get into pairs. • Using a deck of playing cards, the students should divide the cards evenly among themselves. • The red cards are negative and the black cards are positive.   For example a red 10 is a negative ten. The face cards are all 10s.   • The play...
Read more