Tuesday, August 27, 2013

What We Did on Day One

  • We made big changes to our middle school this year. We moved to the building that used to house our first and second grades, and moved student lockers out of the classrooms and into the hallway. This is a HUGE change for us. The kids love it. We love it. It's very different.
  • We're in the process of replacing the windows that make up one wall of this hallway. This means we can't (don't?) open them at the moment. It was 90 today. Middle school kids smell like. . . middle school kids. I spent some time holding open the door at the end of the hallway to air it out.
  • During 3rd period, we handed out combination locks. Most of our students had never used one before. Combination locks are hard, but twenty years after high school graduation, I'm still awesome at combination locks. I opened approximately 826 locks today. I might have rounded up.
  • I gave a quiz on the first day. I'm that teacher. I was going to give two, but I ran out of time, so I'll be the teacher that gives a quiz on the second day, too. Do you know the difference between a phrase and a clause?
  • My new room was my students' classroom when they were in first grade. I taught first grade tech that year. I am Mr. Feeny.
  • The furniture arrangement is working so far. I spent the day wandering the room and teaching from all sides. I liked this.
  • In addition to our Middle East and a North Africa geography quiz, we started to set up two notebooks (social studies and reading) and numbered some pages. Today we will make charts. Using rulers. I have lots of rulers.
  • We talked about books. I recommended some, and they recommended books to each other. It was good.
  • With one group, I was able to start our first read-aloud, Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. I love this book. Two pages in, and we already had things to talk about.
  • It was hot. Today will be worse. The radio keeps describing it as "uncomfortable." That's not helping.

What did you do on your first day?

 

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