Hmm, did I miss something or is your second image (“what I read from”) identical to your first? I was sort of hoping that I’d know what those cryptically numbered boxes were for…. or is this something that only Mac users can magically see? ;-)

What a post of beauty. I won’t even student teach until next year, but I’ll be using some of these ideas (reformulated elementary style) for my two remaining “placements.”

Perhaps this year, you’ll just post every single thing you do, eh?

Hello, Dan,

All the getting to know you stuff is great, but I always preferred to start in immediately on the first day with work.

On the first day of school, students spend all day in their other classes doing the same thing over and over: get the books, the syllabus, the icebreaker, and then, time permitting, something mildly academic.

By getting right into the meat of your class, you establish the working rules not through lecture, but through example. By your choice of lesson/choice of approach, you can create the opportunities that let students begin to experience the tenor of your class.

Then, when you give them the syllabus/expectations, you can cover them in a fraction of the time because you have already established a context in which your expectations make more sense.

More content, less words. Never a bad thing.

Cheers,

Bill

RE “too much too fast” — that was always a concern, and one that seemed connected to the “who am I teaching to” question, herinafter referred to a WAITT —

WAITT comes up in classrooms where you have students of (sometimes widely) varying abilities, or just about every classroom. So the question becomes, do you teach to the strongest student in the class and risk losing the students needing more support, or do you teach to the middle, or to the lowest, etc —

Too much too fast becomes a valid concern if you expect your students to actually retain everything you place before them. I view one of the main goals in teaching as creating both points of reference and reasons for curiosity — Establishing trust with your students (trust that you know what you’re talking about, trust that they will be treated fairly by you, trust that you will be consistent, trust that they can make intellectual mistakes and not be penalized) allows you to move quickly and cover a lot of ground, and as a consequence you will create both points of reference (remember when we talked about) and curiosity (I didn’t quite get all of it, but it was interesting).

Because if kids walk out of your class interested about your subject, as a teacher, you have succeeded wildly.

Good luck with the first day — I look forward to reading about it.

To Bill (and in relation, to Dan): Agree wholeheartedly with the “start teaching” approach to day one, rather than to hammer home the same ‘ol same ol’ that every other teacher will offer throughout the building. While some parents may be a bit ruffled they can’t go over the syllabus right away that 1st night, within 2 days the kids are a) engaged and b) focused…and complaints go right away.

As to the too-much-too-fast potential, indeed that can take place. Bill, you make a great point re: teaching for content and curiosity. To that end, what I’ll be doing is posing a problem to my students that requires no previous work in my class (i.e. the literature, the grade level we’re at, etc.). Instead, it puts the kids into solo, small group, and all class debates on a ‘moral’ issue that ties immediately back into every bit of literature we’ll be discussing the remainder of the year.

While the challenge’s ‘solutions’ will be weighed against each other so that the students feel some sort of resolution as they exit class #1, the real goal of the opening problem-solving exercise is for me as the teacher to see what their instincts are as problem-solvers, to guage how each class works independently and in groups, and to subtly (or not so subtly) let the kids know what I mean by “putting skin on the table” and my own teaching style…without just reading my syllabus and class rules aloud.

Then, on day #2, we’ll use the previous day’s exercise to as an entree into the larger class issues, syllabus, schedules, rules, opportunities, and attitude…all based on shared context rather than just teacher-talk or rumor.

I’ve usually done the reverse but after 3 years away from the classroom I have NO time for the kids/I to waste once we’re together. Plus, we need to collectively set the tone with my guidance, and this seems to be the best way to launch.

I like the cup activity. I am in a very rural school, and the kids already know each other by the time I get them in high school. I was considering an activity using reflections and rotations. Like Bill, I would be jumping into meat using baby chunks that they should remember enjoying from junior high. The cup activity is a good one for opening day in Algebra; I will bookmark it so that I can come back to it.