First Week of School Fun
The first week of school is always exciting for me. I love the smiles and hugs as students meet on the playground before school that first day. And I love their enthusiasm as they enter my room for the first time that year. This year it's even more exciting as I have my own room. My main classroom management strategy has always been the relationship I have with my students and developing that relationship early in the year is key to it's success. Although I know it's important to cover the expectations, rules, and consequences for not following the rules, I hate to do this the first week. I want students to LOVE technology class as much as I do. I really bring my enthusiasm for the students and the content into the classroom that first week so that when I get to the expectations and rules week 2, they are hooked so heavily that of course they want to follow those rules. Of course, I will explain our PAWS expectations and structures of the classroom, next week. And at some point during the year, I'll have to use our 4 Rs (remind, redirect, relocate, refocus) to help students adjust their behavior. But for now, the joy and excitement of the first day shines. A few of my favorite first day lessons are below.
The first day of kindergarten, I am focusing on learning student names and having them feel safe with each other in my room. Our learning goal was getting to know each other and what we'd be doing this year. After showing students the three things we use in Tech (Chromebooks, iPads, and Dash/Dot), I explained to students how they would introduce themselves. Sitting in a large circle, each student introduced themselves to the class, The class then said "hi ___" and then the student used the Go App to move Dash around the circle, make a sound, or light pattern. Students loved having a chance to use Dash the very first day and we all got to know each other a bit.
In fourth grade, we started the year by talking about the game Pokemon Go and the technology behind it. I told students that all summer I was curious about how I could use that technology with students and after researching my curiosity, I realized we could use Aurasma to tell about things my students were curious about. We talked about some of the things they are curious about and then they spent the rest of the class period creating Auras. First they created index cards about something they were curious about to use as targets for their Aura, then they created their video overlay. Wow did we have fun in fourth! Their work is now displayed on the bulletin board outside our room with directions for visitors to view their work.
In fifth grade, we started the year with digital citizenship. Our district requires fifth graders to create their own passwords for their Google Accounts. We had fun learning about strong passwords and then creating their individual passwords. It is so much fun to see the creativity in their thinking as they applied what they learned about strong passwords to create their own password. Our closure in fifth grade is tweeting out something learned that day. Each day a different student is responsible for the online tweet (follow us at @p2ptech5) and the rest of the class tweets on post it notes on the class twitter feed.
It was a great first week of school and I'm looking forward to a fantastic year in my new room.
