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It is always so interesting to see what others are doing in their classrooms on the first day of school. This year, for me, is going to be a interesting experience.
Last year was the first year of my team starting the MAC Team at our school. MAC stands for Multi-Age Classroom, and we teach 4th, 5th, and 6th grade all in one! So this year we are presented a few other challenges for us. We know 2/3 of our class (because they stay with us for 4th, 5th, and 6th grade), so we needed to figure out how to make the day exciting for our returning members and still set the high expectations for our new members. Therefore, the day may seem like we are rushing it or not spending a ton of time with expectations but that is mainly because we have learners that will be our models and guide those new 4th graders.
We also wanted to have something that the kids created so that we could hang it up in the hallway for our fast approaching Back-to-School Night. So in order to meet this need and also have the kids rotate through all three of our classrooms we split up the work and the kids will do one piece in each room while still getting to know us and learning our individual room expectations. So the kids will come to the rotations, we will introduce ourselves and tell them a little about what we did over the summer (I have a PowerPoint Presentation for them to see pictures) and some room expectations. After that, the kids will share something about themselves and we move into our lesson.
We end the day with a fun BreakOut session that will give them a treat to have while getting to know the new 4th graders.
Overall, I think it is fun and relaxing. We tried not to jam pack the day and NO we did go over rules because I just don't feel the need to go over our classroom rules on the first day. I think that is more of a personal preference. I hope this helps give y'all some ideas!
Bridget
I can't wait for the first day, I went from 3rd grade to kindergarten and first grade combined this year. So I think we are going to do a time capsule where I take everybody's picture and we do a simple paragraph about themselves. As well as each child will get a "special" puzzle piece to draw on and once put together -two kidos holding a heart- will lead us to our very first read aloud of the year.