The First Few Days

It takes more than one day to get kids comfortable with the expectations in my class. WE practice & review for a long time. It looks something like this:

Day 1 - Introductions (Read about day 1 in detail.)

Day 2 - 

• Welcome back students at the door, reminding them to check the agenda displayed on the board.
• Review start-of-class procedure/check the agenda.
• Pick up Safety Contracts & composition books (Have Sharpies to put names on books.)
• Give students a chance to ask questions.
• Go over RULES.
• Review group work procedure / discuss the importance of TEAMWORK (Read my TEAMWORK post.)
• Do a teamwork activity like Marshmallow Towers, Marble Ramp, there are hundreds on the web.
• Discuss teamwork and group work. Advantages? Disadvantages?
• Review clean-up procedure.
• Dismiss.

Day 3 - 

• Meet students at door, reminding them to check the agenda displayed on the board.
• Review procedures.
• Start of class
• Getting supplies
• Pick up Safety Contracts.
• Set up Journals. (See how I do this here.) This takes a long time, longer than you would think.
• Teach how to glue (Dot, Dot, Not a Lot!)
• Scrap paper in the recycle bin.
• Wander around and check each journal.
• Review teamwork. Complete the teamwork organizer and glue it into the journal.
• Review end-of-class procedure.
• Dismiss.

Day 4 - 

• Meet students at door, reminding them to check the agenda displayed on the board.
• Students will be instructed to get their journals out & have them on their desks.
• Explain how a daily warm-up question will be displayed from here on out.  Show the timer and how it will work.
• Do the first warm-up question.
• Wander around and check each journal.
• Do Animal Tracks observation & inference lesson.
• Process lesson.
• Explain turning-in-work procedure.
• Turn in student sheets.
• Review Rules, Procedures.
• Dismiss.

Day 5 - 

• Have agenda & warm-up question ready, remind students to check board and get busy.
• Discuss warm-up question.
• Explain EarthWatch.
• Students have a copy of the Atlantic Basin Hurricane Tracking Chart & a world map.
• We use the data from the National Hurricane Center to track tropical storms & hurricanes during the year.
• We use the World Map to record any other Earth event - large earthquakes or volcanoes, wildfires, tsunamis, landslides, avalanches, anything really.
• In the fall, we record hurricane data almost daily. After that what we record is random, but usually we have something a couple of times a week. I get my earthquake data from Teachable Moments - it is wonderful!
• Do first EarthWAtch
• Continue on with content instruction.
• Review procedures as needed.
• Dismiss.

The rest of the year -

• I introduce procedures & policies as they come up.
• I review something weekly.
• I often include a quiz or test question about a procedure or policy.
• After a holiday, I review the major procedures before we do anything.
• It's an ongoing process.

The time I take to teach procedures up front really pays off the rest of the year.  We save a ton of time because kids know what to do.