Oh boy, that first day is a doozy. We had a great first day and I have a great group, but I'm exhausted!
The biggest challenge today was getting used to my new name. I'm so used to Miss Veenstra or Miss V and hearing Mrs. Johnson all day was a little weird. Not to mention former students called me by my maiden name and I even referred to myself by it to my new students. I'd catch myself saying "When Miss Veenstra says this..." and my new students are all looking at me like who is that. I'm a little worried they think I'm confused lol.
Anyways, besides that the first day went smoothly! I guess by the time it's your 9th year you start to get the first day down to a routine.
Here are a few things we did today...
Our first Morning Meeting Activity, I found on the blog Who's Who and Who's Knew by Michael. It's called Finish the Picture. What I liked about this activity and Michael mentions this on his blog is that all students can do it. It doesn't require much direction and it gets them busy those first few minutes of school or the activity. I took this time to go around and talk with the kids and get to know them a little better right from the start. The other neat thing about is that they share their pictures with their table when time is up. I loved hearing their little conversations starting and seeing them work as a team a half hour into class. I highly recommend you go to his blog and grab his freebie!
Here was our Morning Meeting Message today. I always love to see what the kids want to work on in 2nd grade. I quickly found out today that many of my kids are advanced and some already are working on their multiplication and division. I'll definitely have some differentiation plans in my future!
Can't have a school day without GoNoodle. Today we picked our first champ and did Pop Se Ko and Push All the Buttons. I love GoNoodle and the kids enjoyed the brain breaks too!
Here's a math activity that we did today. We had CGI training last week and I had been trained in a prior school. One of the big focuses of CGI is being able to compose and decompose numbers. So, I thought I'd see where the kids were at. I'm so glad I did this activity because it told me a lot about the kids. We did a few examples together with the number 20. I then let them pick their number to work with - 30, 40, 50, or 100. It was interesting to see what number they chose. Some chose well for their ability and some probably took the easy way out. It was also interesting to see what operations they were using to create their specific number.
This is another first day favorite. I made these frames last year and we again took first day pictures today. I love to give these to the parents at back to school night and also have students put them in their portfolio so we can see how they grow throughout the year.
That's it for me today! I'm off to bed. Gotta get ready for Day #2 tomorrow!
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