First Day of School - 2017

I wanted to share with everyone what we did on our first day yesterday.  We had a great first day full of lots of fun and learning - mainly procedures and expectations, but we did start with a little math and writing today.

Check out what we did below....

Here was our schedule. It was weird writing all of this on the board again. I need to get back in all of the routines!

Our Morning Message during Morning Meeting was focused on things they're excited to learn this year. As you can see, many are excited to work on division. They were not as excited when I told them we don't go over that until January.

For Morning Meeting Activity, I always start with this Finish the Picture activity. Unfortunately there is no copyright so I'm not sure where I got it. I love starting with this because it gives the kids a chance to be creative and work on something with no right or wrong answers. They can turn the doodles into anything they want and then I have them share their picture with the table groups.

I did give a test yesterday morning. I'm going to be doing Math Rotations this year so lots of small group work.  For this, I'm going to be giving pre-tests before we begin a unit so I know where each child is at. I'm hoping this will help me differentiate more and meet the needs of all of my learners.

Of course we did a first day of school picture - although I'm kicking myself because I totally forgot to get a whole class picture. I decided to jump in and get a picture too. Although - this is not my first day of second grade lol.

In the afternoon, I had the students work on a tower building challenge. Each table group had the same number of cups and their goal was to build the highest tower. The winning group gets to pick our GoNoodle Brain Breaks the next day. Each day this week I've found a challenge/STEM activity that we'll work on. I like these because it gives the kids a chance to work together, practice teamwork, and it's great for me to observe them in different situations.

**The winning tower!

We did work on some other things but I was unable to get pictures of everything. It was a whirlwind of a day that started with a thunderstorm and rain and also had a solar eclipse!  Check out my Instagram and Facebook throughout the week for more first week ideas!