Sunday, August 25, 2013

First Days of School Activities

I can't believe that I have made it through the first three days of school!  They were long, but filled with lots of fun and engaging activities. We have been working on a lot of getting to know you and building classroom community activities.  In order to get to know a little bit about the students before they arrived, I sent them their very first homework assignment with their welcome letters!  We use Edmodo in our classroom, so I had them to join our class Edmodo page and create a post telling me and their classmates a little bit about themselves.

Of course, they wanted to know A LOT about their teacher!  So I had them to complete a KWL chart on me!  It's always interesting to see what the students already know about you as a teacher or what they think they know about you!  Each learning club was given a few sticky notes and they had to write down what they knew about me, and what they wanted to know about me.  We then posted them on our class KWL chart.  After that, I used a PowerPoint presentation to introduce myself.  Students then completed the L part of the chart.  


Finally, the students completed a Find Someone Who.... on Ms. Scriven.  They had to mill around to music to find someone who could answer several questions about myself.  They really enjoyed this activity!



One last activity to share...I wanted the students to learn more about their classmates so, they completed  "Me Puzzles."  After they completed the puzzles, they cut the pieces out and placed them in an envelope.  Students then had to draw a self portrait on the front of the envelope.  After everyone completed their self portraits, I collected them and gave each student a different envelope.  They had to put the puzzle back together and try to guess whose puzzle they had based on the information on the puzzle pieces and the self portrait! My students were disappointed that I didn't complete a puzzle, so next year, I think I will!





What are some fun getting to know you and building classroom community activities have you done with your students?  I would love to hear all about them!


3 comments:

  1. Great ideas! My kiddos and I wrote a class bucket list! We only did 5 and I want to get to 10, but we ran out of time! I'll post it when I get done. I then used this freebie to have students write their own bucket lists!

    Lindsey
    The Journey of a Beginning Teacher

    ReplyDelete
  2. I would be lost without Edmodo in our class. I have the kids do an assignment on there just about every night!
    Alison
    Rockin' and Lovin' Learnin'

    ReplyDelete
  3. Great ideas! Love the KWL about you! The puzzle is really cute as well!

    ReplyDelete