First day of school Tips

1. Just keep breathing
2. Be flexible
3. Drink water, lots of it
4. Plan more than you need but know and accept that you won't get to all of it
5. Go with the flow
6. Be ready to nip kid misbehavior in the bud because they are testing your boundaries from the very beginning
7. Be organized and ready to go with materials that you need laid out and easy to grab
8. Have your first few days schedule written out to nearly the exact minute with time spent on each activity clearly designated
9. Plan activities that keep kids busy and out of trouble while you take care of first day paperwork like really long attendance sheets and the lists of who is walking, who is bussing, and a myriad of other forms you have to deal with at the beginning.
10. Plan less-threatening activities, like don't require kids to do a lot of sharing, because they are nervous about their first day
11. Any materials you are not going to use, put them away out of sight so you don't feel overwhelmed
12. Even if you don't know how or what or why of things, act like you do
13. Give the kids a fresh start every year. It is helpful to know the red flag behavior problems and what other teachers have done to manage them, but that is it. And tell the kids it is a fresh start for them. Don't ask them about last year, ask them to think about what kind of student they want to be this year and start there, with what they want to achieve themselves in the 5th grade.

Teacher Interview, Part 2: Classroom arrangement

Throughout the school year, students are in cooperative groups with assigned jobs to group members and groups change periodically over the year, as does the exact table arrangement of the groups. There are a couple main reasons for this: one, all the learning in my team is inquiry-based, and true inquiry requires teams of students; two, arranging tables in groups allows for more floor space that the teacher, even in 5th grade, uses all the time. My master teacher likes to move her kids a lot in her class, just get them moving, because it is more fun for her and for them and it is a more effective way to learn for some of them and it is a GLAD strategy. GLAD strategies are a collection of strategies used to reach all learners, regardless of ability level or language proficiency or learning style.


Despite the nearly year-round groups, the teacher starts the school year with students in rows. Students remain in rows for the first week and half or two weeks of school, then the desks are put in groups. The reasons she starts out with rows include the following: one, it helps her to get to know the kids and who works well with whom; two, the teacher really needs all of her students' attention at the beginning of the year so she can get the routines and expectations clearly understood and established; three, being in rows is a safety zone for the new kids, the kids who just moved to this school from somewhere else--they are less likely to be singled out when students are in rows; four, having rows that all face the teacher sets the tone that the teacher is the boss of the class; five, students get to know the teacher first--they don't have to make efforts to get to know many others in the beginning, they just have to get to know the teacher--she thinks this makes it less overwhelming for the kids.


Pictures will be added later. Classroom is still a mess of planning.

Teacher Interview, Part 1: Classroom management

The classroom management plan at my 5th-grade placement is somewhat school-wide with some grade-specific adaptations. School-wide, behavior and academic management is based on a book called Inch and Miles: The Journey to Success by John Wooden. The Journey's ultimate goal is to achieve competitive greatness. The foundations of this pyramid are: industriousness, friendship, loyalty, cooperation, and integrity. Up the pyramid you have the attributes of self-control, alertness, initiative, and intentness; then you move up to achieving condition, skill, and team spirit, followed by poise and confidence, and then ultimately competitive greatness. Inch and Miles are a schoolwide program, and throughout the first part of the year, teachers are to focus on teaching two or three attributes or skills in the pyramid.

Also schoolwide is the code of conduct, and this code of conduct is maintained by daily monitoring of progress that students reflect on each day and parents are informed about. Different grades have different things that constitute warnings and how many warnings kids get before they have to do a refocus sheet in a refocus room (a buddy room--another teacher's room) and what behaviors constitute an immediate refocus or visit to the principal's office. In 5th grade, one missed homework assignment equals a warning, and once a kid has three warnings they have to do a refocus sheet. Each day at the end of the day, the 5th-graders reflect on what kind of day they had and they give themselves a color rating (green, yellow, or red) in their agenda/planner. Teachers walk around and discuss the rating, checking the management binder that travels with students to every class they go to, including specialists, and have a conversation with the student about what they did well or poorly that day. This planner goes home every night to be signed by parents, and if parents do not sign the planner, I think that constitutes a warning as well. Once a kid gets 2 or 3 warnings, they automatically have a yellow day, I think. I am still trying to figure out the subtleties, but that is kind of the essence of it.

Anyways, within the classroom(s) of 5th grade, all 5th grade teachers participate in Star Team, which is an extra motivator to the kids. If you are on Star Team, that means you are doing really well. You have to have a whole week of green days before you can be on Star Team, and if you have a single non-green day, you are off Star Team and start over. Star Team members also have the more powerful/cooler class jobs (class president, bell ringer, etc) and if you are not on Star Team, you won't have the "good" jobs. Also, after a kid has been on Star Team for 4 consecutive weeks, then they have the option of being the Star Student that week, meaning they get their pictures on a poster and get to bring in stuff to share about themselves. The teacher chooses the Star Student by drawing names from a hat of kids that have been on Star Team long enough to qualify.

The four core rules of the school and the classroom are: Be responsible, be respectful, be safe, and do your best (do your best is only the rule in 5th grade, it's an add-on to the three core schoolwide rules).

The rationale behind this complex management plan is that it works. It works because it requires student accountability, and many articles we have read in classes at UWB have shown that when students have greater ownership of their learning and behavior, they excel more. The plan also works because it builds confidence, it lets the kids that really deserve it shine, it does not single kids out because it is all done semi-privately, it makes them more aware and self-reflective about their own learning, and there is a positive twist to everything, and humans respond to positive better than negative, according to research.