The Basics of Back to School

It is senior year, and I am preparing for my first day of school, which will be in January - things are a little out of order right now. 

This week our methods lab assignment was to simulate what the first day of school would look like in our classroom. The only requirements were that we review our classroom procedures, expectations, and consequences and conduct a get-to-know-you activity within 10 minutes. 

For my session, I began class like a normal day and asked students to model the correct behaviors before they even knew what the classroom procedures were. I did this by using designating behaviors and giving clear verbal and written directions. I had bellwork on the board and reviewed the objectives for the day right off the bat. I think this was important for setting the tone versus allowing students to make up their own procedures for the first day. This way, when I formally reviewed the procedures students didn't think twice they were just like "Ok, we already know how to do that". 

For my ice breaker activity, I asked students to pair up and discuss the question,

If you could be any animal for the rest of your life what would you be and why?

I thought this question paired nicely with the course, Veterinary Science, and accomplished my goals of getting students to interact and share about themselves so the instructor and classmates could start to get to know each other. 

I chose to spend more time explaining classroom procedures and less time explaining expectations and consequences for a few reasons. 

1. The classroom procedures are what will make the course run efficiently day-to-day, so in my opinion, these are the most important.  

 

2. I wanted to give students ownership of the classroom expectations by providing an outline of what I expect as their teacher, but then having the students tell me what the means to them by providing examples. I used the collaborative website, Mural, to do this. I liked using this website because students could work in one space all at the same time (similar to a Google Doc) and it was well-suited for virtual teaching which was how I completed my lesson via Zoom. I asked my class to provide examples under the expectations I had given them: Be respectful, be engaged, be responsible, and be safe. This is what they said and given more time to complete the lesson, would have sparked a great conversation about what my classroom environment would look like and feel like throughout the school year. 

 

3. In my classroom, I do not want to waste time lecturing over consequences. Sure it is important to have a framework for how misbehavior will be handled and to clearly communicate that to students, but ideally, my consequence will align to those of my school district and students should be aware of how misbehavior is generally handled via the student handbook, which students are bombarded with on the first day of school from guidance counselors, principals, and other teachers anyways.  

I struggled with the time limit placed on this exercise. We were asked to take 10 minutes or less for this exercise and when I reviewed my video it was about 14 minutes long. I realized that my mistake was not accounting for the time it would take to transition to my Mural activity. I should have allotted 2-3 minutes for this transition to occur, especially since it was a virtual activity and I was online and all my learners were in-person the time needed was greater than usual. In the future, I will include this on my lesson plans to force myself to account for this time. 

As an agriscience teacher, with a full class period to execute this task, it would be my goal to take about half the period doing first day of school procedures and half the period introducing students to content. What activities do you do on the first day of school to introduce students to the general content of the course and get them excited to learn more?