First Day

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Home : 2004 : July : 22

First Day
By Victoria

I would say, leave your bulletin boards almost bare. Most of them should start to fill up with student work. Just put up your backing paper and your borders. Decorate your door with your welcome stuff, but leave the boards
for after your students have started to produce things.
Try to have your library organized. I use baskets labeled fiction, non-fiction, ABC books, animals, fantasy, fairy-tale, folk-tale, etc... I label each book with a different colored sticker dot that corresponds to the basket's label. That way, the student can look at the book and look to see which basket it should return to

when he's done with it.

Have your supplies organized however you intend to do it for the year. Is each table going to have a basket to share supplies like pencils, crayons, scissors, and markers? You may want to model how we share and use these things before you set EVERYTHING out on the table (I'm thinking especially the scissors here), otherwise you may get people with "grabby hands" and goodness knows we wouldn't want that! :o) I saw a really great picture in a book about classroom management that showed a compartmentalized container with cups in it for each separate supply - that way there wasn't too much on the tables (all contained in one basket), but stuff didn't get all mixed together inside the container.

If you use a teaching wall (an area with your calendar activities, your poetry and shared reading activities, your graphing etc..), I'd probably have that already in place too. We're mandated to teach on a rug in NYC, so I have that whole rug area set up before the first day.

That's all I can think of on no coffee, but I'll post more if I think of anything later on!