First Days Back!

Welcome back! I don’t know about you, but we’ve been doing a lot of this (practicing our procedures and routines).

Look at that straight line! Our first days have been filled with lots of modeling and practicing.
We’ve also been establishing our rules and we created our step-by-step morning routine together as a class. Once we create it, I write it out on an anchor chart for students to refer to, and then we practice and model the routine until students can successfully implement it.

Practicing every single classroom procedure and routine is absolutely crucial for a successful year. If your students don’t know what you expect of them, they aren’t going to give you what you want. To make sure you aren’t leaving out any important procedures or routines, check out my checklist of Classroom Procedures to Teach {Back to School Classroom Management Tool} by clicking HERE or the button below.

In addition to practicing our procedures and routines, we also like to have fun and build classroom community! We’ve been doing a ton of the team building from my Beginning of the Year Team Building Activities. Click HERE or the button below to check them out.

Here are my students playing one of my favorites, round 1 of the Name Juggle!

How did all of your first days of school go?

4 Comments

  1. Seriously girl! The amount of differentiation you do is amazing! Your kids are lucky to have you. We are on day 8 and still practicing a straight QUIET line. They must think I’m kidding when I say we’ll start over. Um…obviously not. :) Good luck with day #2!

    Amanda
    The Teaching Thief

  2. Haha Amanda you’re too funny! I have my special ed. degree too maybe that’s why?! Thank you for sharing that about your straight line! We’d get along GREAT!! You made me feel better about saying “START OVER”. I may have said it 50+ times today!!

  3. Since you have upper ed experience and the special ed degree can you help me figure something out? I am teaching US history to 5/6 grades. Each class is 60 minutes. In one of the 5th grade classes I have 2 special ed students and also 2 in one of the 6th grade classes. Very special ed, all 4 have an IQ below 60. HOW do I help them in US history? They can’t communicate with anyone as far as having a conversation.

    Our special ed teacher is not helping the 4 of us that teach these 4 classes.

    Any suggestions???? :)

    Shannon
    http://www.irunreadteach.wordpress.com

  4. Hi Shannon- I’m sorry your special ed. teacher hasn’t helped you much. I do hope you get the help you guys need! I can most definitely offer some ideas, but it is super hard not knowing your kids, or what you are teaching. Also, these are only my personal opinions. Many other teachers may disagree or think otherwise.

    Typically students that have IQ’s lower than 60 have cognitive impairments but 100% know and enjoy what is going on in the classroom. Always make sure those students feel welcome and a part of the class, because when they do, their performance will SOAR. I’m sure you know that though! In the past I have had pictures cues prepared in advance for my students when, for example, the rest of the class was taking notes. They would look at the picture that correlated to our discussion and write one word or one sentence under the picture to show their understanding. You could type notes up in advance in the cloze note style and these students can fill in the blanks as you go through your discussion. I have a bunch more ideas, feel free to email me at nannini.kristine@yahoo.com if you would like! Hope this helps! :)

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