First Day of School Procedures: Organizing School Supplies

I originally posted this in 2015 and I'm reposting it because I dealing with school supplies is my second favorite part of the first day of school (after meeting the students). I know longer get to do it in my role as instructional coach but I still love school supplies. 

Students come on the first day and we deal with supplies. If a student bought everything on our school supply list, it would fill several grocery bags. Some are class supplies and need to be taken up in an organized way.

Our students share 3 teachers all day long and stay with their homeroom. My team and I discuss before hand what we need for our classes. And then we each decide what to do with the rest. My first year teaching, I do not remember what I did. I do remember that it was a mess. I went back and looked at my teaching journal and from my first day of teaching I have this sketch.

I wished someone had talked to me about collecting supplies on the first day, because I struggle with organization. (Have you seen the title of my blog?) After that first day, I realized I needed to do better and I have picked them up like this every since. I put baskets/boxes/tubs around the room on the first day of school with labels. After introductions, names, a quick overview of the day, we dig into supplies. I go down the list of supplies and ask students to get out one or two supplies at a time. If we are going to keep it in the classroom, I dismiss a few groups at a time to take it to the right spot. If they are going to keep it, I suggest a good way to store it, keep it, set it up, etc. I also give groups a Sharpie to write their names when necessary.

Then at the end of the day, I can go through all the baskets, and put the supplies away.

If the supply list calls for multiples of the same things, I have the students keep one and I take the other and store it in large plastic bags with their name on it. From experience, I have seen them lose the extra supplies before they have a chance to use them. Since these supplies are meant to least ALL year, I try to make that happen.

Since school supplies are my favorite, I love seeing so many brand new school supplies all at once! It is one of my favorite parts of the first day of school, especially since it is more organized then the first time.

Class Incentive

Oh my! Only 6 more school days until Christmas break and we are all ready. I am so excited to see my family and can't wait for my daughter to open her presents. She has seen all of them--but she is only 2 and will still be excited Christmas morning when she opens them. 

So... how do you keep classes of 6th grades excited about following classroom expectations? I am not big on giving rewards in the classroom--I wish I could eliminate them all together--but I am not ready yet. They are a crutch I occasionally use. 

If you use rewards, here is one way for the class to work together. I was introduced to this at a training last year. Each one of my classes has their own 100s chart. Every time I feel like the class has worked well, or entered the classroom quietly, or we've had a good discussion, etc I cross off a number. I use a random number generator app I have on my phone to pick a number. 

Once the class gets 10 in a row in any direction, they will all get a prize. Probably candy. The first day I did this was the day before Thanksgiving break--one class got 8 numbers crossed off in one day because they were so amazing. 

Any ideas for keeping kids excited between the holiday breaks?

Blog Posts I Love--Part 5

Another post of blog posts I love. I found some great ideas this week and want to share them with you. 

1. From Embrace the Drawing Board--The game integer-nary. It is like pictionary, but with integer equations. For example, a student might draw the equation -3+7=-4. Then on a white board, they model it and then their team has to guess what equation it is. I am doing this in my math centers as soon as we get back from Thanksgiving. The students can also move to modeling expressions like 4x+5 and algebraic equations like x+3=10. 

2. The week before Thanksgiving the students had a science benchmark. Our schedule was different for the day and I wanted to have an interesting activity for my homeroom to do afterwards. 

Enter--Hexaflexagons. At Math=Love she shares how she introduces the whole lesson. My students LOVED making these. I had instruction, but lost the copies. But most of the students were able to figure it out on their own by watching the videos linked in the blog post. I did have the template for them to cut out. 

This is one of my student's hexaflexagon. 

 

3. Counting Circles from Who is a Math Nerd?

This is a whole group activity that has students count by a certain number. Say you start counting by 10s but you start at 63. Or you count by 1 1/4, but you start at 1 1/2. It is a mental math routine and I can already imagine it being helpful to my students. We have transition time and sometimes we wait for other classes to be ready to switch. This could be a helpful activity during that time. But I would also like to make time for it in class because I would like to give the students time to have a discussion about their counting.

4. Smart Classroom Management

I just found this blog and I love it. It is a classroom management blog--which is one thing I am always trying to be better at. Good learning cannot happen if there isn't good classroom management. I feel like most good classroom management is just common sense and begins by treating students as people with needs and wants. This post is about letting students get out of their seats and establishing routines. I plan to go through this blog thoroughly.

100 Minutes to Teach Math!

I have three math classes and each class lasts 100 minutes. It is a ridiculously long time to teach math compared to 50 minutes, but I fill every minute of every class period. I do not know how I could fit everything into a shorter amount of time.

Not every 6th grader loves doing math for 100 minutes. I have to break up the class period with several activities to keep their interest. 

Time	Activity
15 minutes	Daily Math Review Consists of 4 computation-only problems. The students practice the same types of problem every day for 2 weeks and then they take a quiz. After students work in groups, we grade it together. This week, students are working on integer operations, exponents, and ordering rational numbers.
30 minutes	Whole Group Instruction Introduce topics, do whole group activities, add to the interactive math notebook This is not always direct instruction. Whole group instruction looks different every day. Students may learn about manipulatives (most recently Algebra Tiles). They may also work together to come up with their own rules for the math they are learning.
45 minutes	Math Stations & Small Group Instruction Students work in heterogeneous groups working on fact fluency, iLearn (a math website that all my students have an account to), and practice skills learned in previous weeks with games, task cards, stations, etc. While students work, I pull homogeneous groups to work on the new skill introduced in whole group instruction. I have 5-6 groups per class that I pull depending on the class and how much time I have to pull them all. We do 2-3 rotations in 45 minutes.
10 minutes	Exit Ticket Practice problems, writing in mathematics, Plickers questions… it varies.

This would be on a normal day. Of course everyday is not perfect. Some days there are tests, or pictures, or field trips. Someday I don't do whole group instruction at all and just do small group instruction. 

Because we spend so much time every day doing math, I don't give a whole lot of homework. Maybe one homework assignment a week, and usually not problems. I like to assign mini-project that students would actually want to do and where they can use their own creativity. 

CHAMPS

My campus is a CHAMPS campus.  It is a classroom management system which includes many ideas for managing a classroom.

My favorite part of CHAMPS is having teachers prevent problems before they start. Putting procedures and expectations in place that prevent the most common classroom problems before they even start. If you are struggling for classroom management (which I would say the area I always have to work hard at), I would suggest looking into the CHAMPS Positive Behavior Support.

I have this poster hanging in my room and the students have a copy in their interactive notebook. It tells students what they are expected to do during each type of activity they will do in math class. I have seen this displayed in different ways, but this was the least amount of work for me.

If you would like to use this, you can get it here in Google Drive. Save it as a Copy and then you will be able to edit as you wish.

Mostly at the beginning of the year, I go over this with students every day before every activity. It is one of those beginning of the school year things that gets tedious, but necessary.

Math Review=Warm up
Guided Math=Small Group/Station Time

My campus also uses Voice Levels that are consistent everywhere. Voice Level 0 is no talking, Voice Level 1 is Whisper, Voice Level 2 is conversation, Voice Level 3 is Presentation and Voice Level 4 is outside. Students need to be taught and shown what voice level is appropriate for each type of activity and what is expected of them.

When we were being trained on CHAMPS, we watched videos from the creator Randy Sprick. He shares an experience with a first year teacher. While observing her in an unruly class, she told her students to stay in their seats and work independently. However, if students needed help, some talked to their neighbor which she allowed, some got up and asked her questions, which she sometimes allowed and sometimes told them to raise their hand and she would come to them. Basically, her expectations changed from one minute to the next and the students did not know what was expected of them.

CHAMPS gives teachers a way to decide on expectations they want to have and share them with the students.

First Day of School--Dealing with Supplies

I teach sixth grade but my district considers that elementary, so the school is run similar to an elementary school. The students have homerooms and stay with the same class day long.

So when students come on the first day, we deal with supplies. If a student bought everything on our school supply list, it would fill several grocery bags. Some are class supplies and need to be taken up in an organized way.

 My team and I discuss before hand what we need for our classes. And then we each decide what to do with the rest. My first year teaching, I do not remember what I did. I do remember that it was a mess. I went back and looked at my teaching journal and from my first day of teaching I have this sketch.

And this is how I have picked up supplies every since. I put baskets/boxes/tubs around the room on the first day of school with labels. After introductions, names, a quick overview of the day, we dig into supplies. I go down the list of supplies and ask students to get out one or two supplies at a time. If we are going to keep it in the classroom, I dismiss a few groups at a time to take it to the right spot. If they are going to keep it, I suggest a good way to store it, keep it, set it up, etc. I also give groups a Sharpie to write their names when necessary.

Then at the end of the day, I can go through all the baskets, and put the supplies away.

If the supply list calls for multiples of the same things, I have the students keep one and I take the other and store it. From experience, I have seen them lose the extra supplies before they have a chance to use them. Since these supplies are meant to least ALL year, I try to make that happen.

Since school supplies are my favorite, I love seeing so many brand new school supplies all at once! It is one of my favorite parts of the first day of school, especially since it is more organized then the first time.

Scratch-Off Cards

I saw this tutorial and this tutorial on Pinterest last summer and loved it. When I introduced it to my students, they loved it also. 

Last year I had two classes and on most days I gave at least one ticket out for each class. I looked for students who had followed all of the classroom expectations, including being engaged in learning. I told them sitting there being quiet was not always enough. They needed to answer questions, offer responses, and contribute ideas to our lesson. 

The tutorial says to use contact paper but I used Scotch tape instead. 

I tried to stick to rewards that didn't cost any money. Who has that to spend?

• 5 minutes extra recess for the class
• Choose a song to listen to at the end of the day
• Gum at the end of the day
• Use markers for the day
• Sit in teacher's chair for the day
• Swap seats for the day
• Use markers for the day
• Sit at the teacher's desk for the day
• Eat lunch with Mrs. Stowe and a friend
• Homework Extension (I don't like Homework Passes)
• Five points extra on a test
• Double a Daily Grade
• Draw on Whiteboard at the end of the day

The students really looked forward to seeing who got the ticket every day. For my students who had difficulty following classroom expectations, I would wait until a day they seemed to be more on-task. Then I approached them and offered them the ticket if they could continue the rest of the period. Usually they worked it out the rest of the class.