First Week of Third Grade

There has truly been no greater meme then the one above.

I survived the first day of school.  More importantly, I did it without the aid of coffee or Mountain Dew.  That's right folks, you're looking at a teacher who went caffeine free the first week of the school year. Granted, a nap happened after school.  To be totally fair, a nap happened most of the first week.

I had every intention of coming home each day and blogging about what happened.  But those good intentions didn't get fulfilled.  I'll do my best to recap the whole week at once.

Monday, August 14th

Without an alarm, I woke up at 12:18 ready to start the day.  However, there was still a good five hours before I actually needed to be up and luckily I was able to get a little more rest.

I left early to grab Starbucks on the way to school.  Last week the front of the school and the nearby roundabout were torn up with construction, so I gave myself extra time.

I got to work and after finalizing my first day plans (which ended up taking three days to get through), I set up my photo booth:

We took a pod picture, but I spaced on getting a grade level one.  We ended up taking that picture on Tuesday. I also set out water bottles for their first day treats. 

Officially I have 23 third graders on my roster, but I have a push in student all day from the autism room.  24 is a great number.  Granted, I keep feeling like I've lost a good dozen students because I'm used to fifth grade numbers.  But nope, I just have two dozen kids to keep track of and it's a rather nice feeling.  (Right now, one of the fifth grade classes is sitting at 41 students.  I am so glad I switched.)

I went outside, met students and families, then we came inside to start our day.  Some teachers wanted to jump right in to teaching cursive and silent worksheets.  

We went a different route.  I explained breakfast procedures and had them write about how they were feeling.  We then watched {this Kid President} video to lighten the mood.

Afterwards, we talked about how we were going to help each other out and make this year awesome.

The first day was a combination of get to know you team builders and procedures.  We incorporated movement and practiced talking with one another.  One of  my favorites is "Find Someone Who":

Kids get up, introduce themselves to one another, and ask get to know you questions.  It incorporates movement in a controlled way, which they need after hearing about school procedures and class rules.

Lunch will be an adjustment this year.  I'm used to 12:15, but alas, lunch this year is at 11:25.  The kids get 20 minutes to eat and 20 minutes to play, but teachers are only contracted a 30 minute lunch.  I spend the first 10 minutes in the lunchroom on duty with my kids.  As a trade off, this means I no longer have morning crosswalk duty, which is a blessing.

For those of you who have never experienced the joy of lunchroom duty, it looks a little something like this:

And is best described in this {video}.

But in all seriousness, I spend half the time separating classes into two lines and walking around passing out sporks, napkins, and ketch up packets.  I often fight with sealed fruit cups and have spilled on myself every single day.  I have a new hatred for capri sun juice pouches.  

By the time my ten minutes of duty is up, I've lost most of my appetite.  Watching several hundred kids shovel food into their mouths will do that.  Still, I'd prefer the duty at the start of my lunch period because most of the other teachers have outdoor playground duty and well, it's hot outside.

We did read First Day Jitters on the first day of school and practiced procedures.  I allotted forty minutes for filling out agendas for the first time and going over back to school paperwork.  It was barely enough time.

There weren't any tears the first day, I got hugs goodbye, and as soon as the bell rang, I was ready for a nap.  

I stayed an hour and a half after school getting ready for the next day, grabbed take out (B had softball and I hate cooking for one), and was asleep by 8 pm.

Tuesday

I spent before school prepping these treats:

I ended up passing them out at the end of the day, but still. It's the thought that counts.  I'd also like to thank Costco for having the box of 54 rice krispies on sale for under $7.  Smaller class sizes means the hubs now has a lot of rice krispies to enjoy as a snack for softball.

We did a classroom scavenger hunt the second day (because we ran out of time on the first day of school).  It was a great opportunity to embed voice levels, team work, appropriate movement around the classroom, the location of extra clipboards (if they didn't bring their own from home), and challenges.  Plus involving students in this process means not only are they more likely to remember where something is because they discovered it, but also have a higher sense of shared responsibility and ownership in the classroom.  These feelings of ownership mean that (hopefully) they will take pride in our room and treat things with respect.

 They did a really good job with moving around the classroom appropriately:

They also worked quite well as a team:

To further practice team work, they learned how to do a sort with "No Way Jose! That's a Fact Jack!"

I created several dozen statements about third grade.  Some of them are true (that's a fact, Jack!) and some of them are false (no way Jose).  Students worked together to sort out the statements and explain their thinking.  The point of the activity was to dispel some myths about third grade and to practice team work.

After each table sorted their cards, they went to investigate how another group sorted theirs.  They couldn't touch the other team's cards, but had to practice complete sentence stems:

I agree with ___ because ____
I disagree with ____ because ____

We'll eventually post more, but for the first week, we're using just these two sentence stems.  I have a few kiddos that are ELL, so these sentence stems are a great way for them to practice and structure their responses.

We also managed to take a grade level photo (since that slipped our minds day one):

This is the first time I've ever worked on a predominately male team. It's an adjustment. I've also taught all the men about a few different technology components, so that feels nice to be helpful.  

We've split up planning responsibilities this year and I'm really excited about it.  Almost everyone is on board.  Our two newest teachers are planning math because the Engage NY curriculum is already scripted.  It doesn't mean they get off easy because of how copy intensive this program can be, but rather they get to read the scripted lessons and narrow them down to create lesson plans for us to use.  Two others are planning writing and I'm planning reading with Ms. H.  We moved down from fifth together and are quite used to sharing the responsibilities.  Language will be shared between us and the writing team.  We haven't talked about science or social studies yet, but have a grade level meeting this week. 

We also did a few gallery walks, where students use markers to answer questions that I've prepared on big butcher paper.  I use this as an opportunity to practice using markers, whisper voices, sharing ideas, agreeing or disagreeing appropriately, and moving around the classroom.

After each group visits each question, we talk as a class and make our class norms.  

We used math manipulatives in the form of cubes to practice solving math problems in a hands-on way.  I gave them five minutes of free play to get it out of their systems, then we used the cubes to solve problems.  Ms. S happened to stop by during the five minutes of exploratory free play and was delighted to see their towers:

Three tables built towers, one table built fidget spinners. 

We did actually do some math with the cubes as well:

It was a great chance to embed Number Talk norms and quickly assess some of my students' background knowledge.

This problem was awesome:

It was nice to see how they worked with numbers.

I also had student helpers solve problems on the board:

I didn't know all of their strategies (the ribbon strategy?!) but got it after they explained their thinking.

The rest of the week was a blur.  I napped almost every day after school.  We read the following picture books:

Ms. Nelson is Missing  

This classic tells the tale of a teacher who brings out her alter-ego when the kids are misbehaving.  Not only did we practice coming to the carpet, answering questions, and being good listeners, we also did a gallery walk about how we should treat each other and our teacher.

My Mouth is a Volcano

 
This is newer find for me and quickly became one of my favorites.  It tells the story of Louis who has a problem interrupting (erupting) others.  The tables turn when he realizes how it feels and how being interrupted hurts feelings.  His mom helps him with strategies for not blurting out.

First Day Jitters

This book goes through the typical struggles of getting ready for school, not wanting to start at a new school, being anxious about making friends, and is quite relate-able for students.  But *spoiler alert*, the main character is actually the teacher!

Thank You Mr. Falker

It's always a struggle to not cry with this one.  Patricia Polacco tells of her own childhood struggles to learn to read while dealing with family deaths, a cross country move, and bullying.  We talk about perseverance, bullying, and asking for help.  We also used this book to learn about writing summaries, which we practiced as a class and with table teams.

We practiced fire drills, took a STAR test on the computer, worked on our reading stamina, set up our daily response journals, and had some talks about choices. We learned about Class Dojo and they helped me create the categories for positive and negative choices.  Granted, I already knew what categories I wanted, but they were so excited to participate in making classroom decisions.  That buy-in from students is important.

They got new book orders:

I always give a few weeks between passing these out and having the orders be due to allow for pay day and students to do extra chores to earn books.  I put our class code and the due date on the book orders to make it easy for families.  I also gave them time to explore and get excited about books.  It's important and I get to see what books are on the "must have" list so I can use Scholastic dollars to stock up on things they want to read. 

(For non-teachers, every order placed earns teachers points.  I think if I place a $25 order this month, I get $10 free to spend on books.  It's quite nice to help me build my library.  Plus Scholastic's prices are quite low to make books affordable for kids.  It's a great system.)

We talked about how to care for dry erase markers and set up classroom supplies.  I print their names on sticky labels and use packing tape to secure the labels.  I usually do this at home and can go through the class set during an episode of Friends.

Alas, I do not do these classroom chores alone.

We made a T chart about what constitutes a nurse visit:

 

We learned about stamina and practiced independent reading:

We had a busy, busy, busy week.  I've gotten two love notes so far and lots of hugs.  Third grade is off to a wonderful start!