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 2 -
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.
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