Welcome back! Today, I am giving you all the details on our SECOND day! Some things to note before you dive in: my classroom is 1:1 iPad and we utilize the technology A LOT.
Most of the activities could be adapted to be paper/pencil. Also, our classroom uses an adapted version of Daily 5 for small groups so you will see a lot of those components mixed in.
FOR MORE DETAILED INFORMATION ON THESE LESSON PLANS, SCROLL DOWN!
Happy Teaching!
8:20: Morning Activity - Writer's Notebook
Students enter the room after I greet them at the door. I remind them to check the morning slide for directions. I take the time to point out students who remember to hang their backpack, unplug their iPad, and check the board. I set student's notebooks out for them (they will put them in their table bins to live after this activity).
This frees up some time to take attendance and do other housekeeping things.
8:40: Morning Meeting - Home Reading Routine
My students do not have homework pages. The only thing I expect them to do each night is READ. Take it from the reading guru herself, Jen Jones, students need to read at night to develop a healthy habit of reading. Our school has an amazing library/librarian so students constantly take home library books. I require them to take one book a night from the leveled library. I use these envelopes from Amazon for students' home reading sheets and their book.
Students get their own book as part of our morning routine.
Morning routine: Enter, hang backpack, trade out home reading book (return the old book to the correct bin, pick out another book you haven't read yet), unplug iPad, check the board.
I have a leveled library with bins of leveled books J-R. I have a dry erase label on the front of the bins where I write student names. They then know that is the bin they pick a book from. I change the labels as necessary. Students turn in their home reading sheet on Fridays. I just place a sticker on it and return it Monday. I use gentle reminders (and parents guilt) if student's are not returning their sheet/reading but I don't punish students. The goal is to make reading a positive part of a family's life.
Because we practice this routine, our morning meeting runs a little long. But, after this, the home reading station is up and running independently, which makes it worth it!
9:00ish: Blobs & Lines
Blobs and Lines is not my activity, it's just a standard good one. I create slides of different blob situations (grouping) and line situations (line....ing?). Here are some I use.
- Gather with people who have the same favorite part of school as you
- Line up by birthdays (January-December)
- Gather with people who have the same favorite season as you
- Line up by height (shortest-tallest)
- Gather with people who get to school the same way as you
It's fun to see students' problem-solving skills and it gets them thinking even more about connections they have with their classmates.
9:20: SeeSaw Practice: Mad Lib
You'll notice a pattern happening here. I try to use every important classroom app in the first few weeks in a fun way. I need students to get used to using them and I like to make it fun. SeeSaw is another app my students will need to use. To get them familiar with the app and comfortable creating videos, I have them get in partners and fill out a funny back to school mad lib. Then, they and their partner take turns reading the mad lib for a SeeSaw video. I also have plans to make SeeSaw task cards to get my kids practicing with more of the tools when they finish. But the mad lib videos are so cute and a great thing to show on the last day of school (they think it's a hoot!)
10:00: Reading Lesson: Picking a Book/Stamina
The second day is the day I start transitioning to our "normal" routine and therefore we begin our first reading mini-lesson.
We talk about picking out good books, create an anchor chart for read to self, and discuss the importance of reading. I have some kids help me model "fake" and "real" reading. We discuss which one actually helps our brains and the reasons people might "fake" read but why they shouldn't. The kids love watching the "fake reader" and laughing at how silly they are (looking around the room, flipping pages really fast, getting up 8 times a minute...etc.). We add REAL READING to our expectations chart.
I call students in small groups to shop for books and point out students using the tools we just discussed.
Once everybody has shopped and has books in their book box, I get our reading stamina chart out.
Students pick a good spot and take their book box with them. When everybody is real reading, I start the timer. I've told students I will stop the timer when I see anybody "fake" reading or distracted. Our goal is to get our brains to be focused on reading for 20-30 minutes.
I time them and stop the timer when I see 3-4 kids distracted. We mark the time on our chart and then we do a brain break.
10:30: PicCollage Writing Activity
We use PicCollage for our weekly digital anchor charts. Students keep the charts in the appropriate albums on their iPad. I need students to know how to use PicCollage for this and other future writing projects, so it's a perfect back to school activity. I use this template:
Students love taking a selfie and the projects turn out so cute! I will usually print them and hang them in the hall.
11:00: There are Rules Game/Social Contract
This game leads into the writing of our social contract perfectly. Get kids in groups of 2-3 and give them dice, a spinner, and a piece of paper. Tell them to start playing (no further instructions) and prepare for their puzzled looks. It's best if you jokingly berate a few kids for not playing like you said to! Eventually, stop the class and lead into a discussion about the importance of rules, or as I like to call them, expectations. People need to know how things work and how they should behave in certain situations.
After this discussion, we create our social contract. I like to pull out the posters from the carousel of expectations activity on day 1. I ask the students to tell me how they would like to be treated in class this year.
We come up with 4-5 important expectations we all agree will help our class run smoothly. I guide the conversation to include responsibility/hard work (after all, WHY do we go to school?)
It's important to me that anything we put on the social contract has a valid reason behind it and the students are able to articulate it.
After the contract is created, students and I sign it. Now, they are bound to it (contractually!) and it's hung in our room. Whenever someone breaks it, I refer to the chart.
1:30: Math Lesson: Conjectures
Our class uses Nearpod for all our math lessons, so I spend some time introducing students to the "after recess" procedure
Come inside, get a drink, grab iPad, find carpet spot, log on to Nearpod, start quiz
I always start the lesson with a short review quiz that gives students something to do and allows us to spiral review. For the first lesson, I include very simple concepts from 2nd grade just to ease the kids in. We go over the quiz and then start our lesson. My goal for the first math lesson is to get kids used to talking about math. We review the mathematical processes. Then, I introduce the students to
conjecture, revise, agree, challenge
The first conjecture I give to the students is this.
I know a dog is an animal.
I know an elephant is an animal.
Dogs and elephants have 4 legs.
So, therefore, all animals have 4 legs.
We practice either agreeing or challenging and what it means to revise our thinking. My first idea wasn't necessarily dumb, I just didn't have all the information. Through our discourse, I was able to revise my thinking and come to a stronger conclusion.
Then, I like to pose this one
All numbers are the sum of their digits.
(i.e. 47 is 4 + 7, 183 is 1 + 8 + 3)
Getting the kids comfortable with discussing math will be very important when we start number/math talks.
After this, we go into our place value review lesson.
3:00: Pack Up/Jobs
Again, we have our class meeting. This time we create our first class goal. We talk about something we all did very well and one thing we think we could work on to make class better. I write the goal up on our board. I let different students try out different jobs (everybody is doing a job this week) and we practice packing up & lining up.
And that is DAY TWO!
Happy Teaching!
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