Welcome back to school! Do you remember how this felt?

Any tips for first day of first year of teaching?!?!? #MTboS

— Nancy Pendleton (@PendleNA) August 4, 2017

If you feel anywhere close to how Nancy feels, click through for some great advice from your friends on Math Teacher Twitter. You’ll see very few people encouraging her not to smile until December and very many people encouraging her to do some math with your students on day one. Great advice. We crowdsourced loads of ideas for those math tasks last year. Please add more there.

As much as I’m curious what happens within the four walls of your classroom on day one, I’m also curious what happens on the four walls of your classroom.

This tweet caught my eye for a couple of reasons:

Leave some white space on your walls for your students to fill with their creations-don't let it look like Pinterest threw up in your room

— Lynn (@LMGirolamo) August 5, 2017

First, “… like Pinterest threw up in your room” is going to be a hard image to shake.

Second, I love the thought that our students would walk into rooms that aren’t fully authored by their teachers, that the space would be shared and awaiting their co-authorship.

Yes! I used to put up huge blocks of colored bulletin board paper so room looked cheerful, but open and ready for S work.

— Lorri Sapp (@LorriSapp) August 5, 2017

If you have experience or ideas here, please add them in the comments. I’ll add the Feltron Project as my own contribution to this planning potluck, and I’d love to learn more.

Featured Tweets

I purposefully leave the biggest wall mostly blank, with a "Teamwork!" poster at the top. Day 1- Ss work on posters hung at end of class.

— Susan Glassburn (@MsGTeachesMath) August 8, 2017

I keep a Poloroid camera and let students take pics at epic moments.

— x-tina marie (@keepingmypma) August 7, 2017

We make a histogram with their birth dates on day one and a scatter plot with their bedtime and awake time #CPM 6thgrade #iteachmath #charts

— Jennifer Profumo (@JennProfumo) August 8, 2017

I use a board with tacks glued to the back of clothes pins to easily swap out student work. Ss can easily choose and swap out.

— Mrs. Beauchemin (@MrsBeauchemin) August 8, 2017

Let MS Ss dictate when they have "Wall worthy" work-- let them share stuff they're proud of!

— Ashley Nesbit (@AGoTeach) August 7, 2017