The First Two Day of School

I met all my new students on Thursday, Aug. 22nd. K-5 classes gathered in the auditorium for the Pledge of Allegiance, Star Spangled Banner and Hatikvah. There were many parents there who joined and brought all their child's supplies.  Then the parents came upstairs with their children. I'm not sure how great that was because many of them got involved in seeing who was on the list for each class and, of course, then wanted to switch their kid into the other class, once they saw the list.

The way it works in a dual curriculum program is that the  students are divided into two groups. One has Hebrew in the morning and the other group has English in the afternoon and then they switch around 12:30.  This year, there are 34 second graders, so there are 17 students in each class.

First thing that the students do after the morning assembly, which is at 7:55 is pray altogether in the Hebrew classroom. At this point, it's usually about 8:05 that they begin praying. The Hebrew teacher, my counter part of the day, I will call her Mrs. B, wants to have the two classes for a long time to pray. But I feel that they are only second graders and don't need to pray for so long. In any event, at the beginning of the year, I won't have half of the class, my morning class, until 9:00 am because she is teaching prayer. It is actually a great prep time for me, but it cuts into my teaching time a lot. I would at least want them to end @ 8:45.

On the first day of school, I started my class by introducing my students to the economy system that I use as a classroom management tool. It is really fantastic, and I got the system from a star teacher named Beth Newingham. If you google her name, you can learn all about the system. Basically, you are giving students credits and debits for following or breaking rules. At the end of the week, you add up all the credits and subtract the debits and they have a total for the week. After a few weeks, you have what is called Pay Day and you give each student a check for the amount that they earned. You then set up a bank and pick students to be bankers. They cash the check for the students. With their money in hand the students can then buy fun things from the store that is set up in the room. KIDS LOVE THIS SYSTEM! It works like a charm. 
We then do community building activities in the classroom. One of the activities we did was called "Keep up the Balloon."
I blew up a balloon and everyone in the class had to work together to keep the balloon up. I then add one more balloon, and then another one. 
The kids loved it. We talked about how important it is to all work together in order to keep the balloon staying up!
I also read the book Chester's Way by Kevin Henkes to build community. It is a great story about how Chester has a best friend, and they do everything together, and when a new girl, Lilly, moves into the neighborhood they don't want anything to do with her until she saves them from some bullies. The boys then become great friends with Lilly and they do everything together until...  Great book for a discussion about including other people. 
We also did an "All About Me" activity. The kids wrote down all the different things about themselves like favorite animal, book, food etc. Later we can see who matches those things in the class, and how you can connect to different people in different ways. We will then make a collage of all the these things. We take a large paper and divide it into 6 boxes. They will make a self-portrait of themselves in the middle, write their name underneath and then write, draw and  glue objects of favorite things they love to do on the side panels of paper. We will hang the finished products on the bulletin boards outside the classroom.

Stay tuned for our schedule for the first full week of school coming up next week!

Tammy

Before the Start

School starts Thursday, August 22nd!

Before it starts, I like to send all the kids in my second grade a letter describing myself and family. I also include all the things I like to do and read. 

I then ask them to write me back a letter describing all the things that they like to do! If they can't mail it to me, I tell them to bring it the first day of school.

I like to get this letter because it gives me a little background of each kid. I also ask the parents to write me a little something about each kid.

Working on activities for first week of school!