Skip to main content

When is Lunch??

How do students get to know the schedule, teachers, principals, guidance counselors, locations, etc when they start at a new school?? When our sixth graders come to us, they are brand new to middle school, very nervous about such a large building, and have so many questions.....when do the class periods end, where is the nurse, how do the lockers work, WHEN IS LUNCH??

To help my homeroom students with all this information, I set aside time on the first day of school to have them find answers to some of these questions, using their assignment book/handbook. The information sheet I give them has about 30 questions about the school, including our homeroom number and the names of all the teachers on our team. This helps them get familiar with both their handbook and all of this new info. Then, over the next couple of days, we play "I Have, Who Has" with these questions several times. This really seems to help them learn and remember important details about their new school, and their anxiety quickly fades!


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Memory Wheels - First Day, Last Day, and Any Day in Between!

This post has been moved to:  http://www.cognitivecardiowithmsmm.com/blog/memory-wheels-first-day-last-day-and-any-day-in-between

Love to Doodle (and a freedbie)

Exponents Color by Number For most of my school life as a student (and even as an adult, during PD), I have really liked doodling! During lectures, discussions...it would help me focus, but also give me something to make me look busy, so I wouldn't get called on in class! I always hated being called on and almost never participated voluntarily:) I liked to draw cubes, rectangles, squiggly lines, etc, and color in different parts of the doodles. Download this freebie:-) I really wanted to make some color by number activities. Since I am not good at creating actual pictures, I decided to make my color by numbers similar to my random drawing/doodling. My Exponent Color by Number is most similar to my past doodles, but I thought it was a little too random, so I started using actual shapes. The Integer Operations Color by Number (freebie), as well as most of my other color by numbers are more structured, but so much fun for me to make! Computerized doodling! Anyone else

Math Class - First Day Activity

Rectangle of pentominoes Many 6th graders seem to have a pretty negative attitude about math, so I try to do something interesting to "grab" them during our first class. Last year, during the first math class, we spent part of the period working with pentominoes. Before working with the pentominoes, however, we played a name game so we could learn each others' names (I find it impossible to start anything else if I don't know some names, and fortunately, I learn them fairly quickly). rectangle outline For the activity, I divided the students into groups of 3 or 4. The directions for the activity were not complicated - the task was to make a rectangle, using all of the pentominoes. I gave students an outline of the rectangle, as pictured to the left, so they would know the correct size of the rectangle. The squares in the grid are each one inch. The rectangle is 5 squares (inches) wide and 13 inches long (13 inches includes the row that has the "Pent