first grade advice

Home

Chat

Blogs

Collection

Directory

Home : 2003 : July : 13

first grade advice
By KarolinBess

I teach 3rd, and this past school year my oldest son went to first grade. It was a GREAT experience mainly because his teacher was so very enthusiastic, energetic, and ORGANIZED.
Remember that lesson plans need to be
flexible at times and that being unorganized will go close to ruining a perfectly good year.
SO, get as many organizing tools as you can. Label things, keep things in their place and teach the kids to do the same thing with the items they use.
This also works wonders for first graders:
Our school has a "Meet the Teacher" night a couple of days before the first day of school.

Each grade level has a designated area of the cafeteria and the parents/students see our grade level signs and our names hanging on the tables in full view of everyone. After a short visit with their teacher, they're invited to go "find" their room and peek in the door window...(rooms are locked of course because we're all in the cafeteria..)During Meet the Teacher Night, each teacher has a "Welcome Packet" all prepared for each student with information about the coming year...schedules, rules, reminders, procedures about buses, car-riders, walkers, map of the school, names of faculty and staff, dress code, etc..
My son's first grade teacher also made a "gift bag" for each student that came to "Meet the Teacher" night.
In the bag she had a Welcome Postcard with the child's name and a little welcome note from her. She also included some "smarties"..(haha..since all the kids were smart..) and a pencil/little toy in each. My son LOVED the little bag. (You could even buy white/brown paper bags and decorate them with popular stickers and write their names on the bags...instead of getting the expensive "party bags"...regular baggies work well, also.)

Some teachers even gave "homework" directions in the bag...just a half sheet of paper that had questions to answer about themselves, and gave out something special to the kids that brought them on the first day of school.

Another "Homework" Idea for the Welcome Bags: Have the kids create an "All About ME" box (old shoebox decorated with all the things they like...pictures cut from old magazines and pasted on the outside of the box..then they filled the box with a few little objects that they liked or that would help tell a story about them). The first day of school, they would each get to tell about their items and their box. CUTE!

Students that were apprehensive about talking in front of the class could give the box to the teacher and SHE would ask prompting questions about the items in the box, and before they knew it, they were talking about their box, too! The kids LOVED it...

Of course, some students aren't ABLE to attend Meet the Teacher Night, so they had a chance to get their "homework" on the first day of school and bring it in as soon as possible, and also receive THEIR treat when the project was brought in.

One piece of MAJOR advice that I'm STILL trying to do myself: NEVER say that you'll DO or GIVE something to the kids when you don't think you'll be able to.
All kinds of promises are made...from pizza parties for good behavior to grab bags for bringing all their homework each week...Either way, make sure what you promise them is EASY for YOU to do, otherwise, you'll find yourself wanting to back out...and believe me, Kids don't let you forget what you've said....hahahha

Good luck and have a great FIRST YEAR!!