The Best First Day Ever

This past Monday was our first day of school.  I woke up easily and filled with excitement to start the year.  

I never blogged about it, but last year was the worst first day ever.  I spilled my breakfast all over myself and forgot all of my stuff at home. 

This year was a complete turn around.  I dare say it was the best first day ever.

I feel like I stumbled across the secret to having a great first day that doesn't leave me feeling completely exhausted at the end of the day.

My husband has learned that I NEVER cook dinner on the first day of school. I basically come home and go to bed.  It may not have been a fancy five course meal, but I actually cooked dinner this year after the first day.  And I didn't immediately go to bed.  In fact I did a little shopping.

What's my secret?

Stations.

How have I never thought to do this before.  I know the gloriousness that is stations.

This year I decided instead of being one more teacher for the students to listen to about rules, procedures, and expectations I would have them do all the work through stations.

My coteacher and I set up five stations for the students to work through.  As they transitioned from station to station we were able to teach those transition procedures in real time.  It was great.

The Literary Maven's stations were our base for everything.  We tweaked it a bit to fit our math classroom and added a few different things.

STATION #1

Syllabus & Meet the Teachers Crossword puzzle.

We each made a page to introduce ourselves to the students.  We also had the class syllabus telling them what to expect and basic information such as supplies.  We used this Crossword Puzzle Maker to create a puzzle using the information from our Meet the Teacher pages and our syllabus.

STATION #2

Quiz Your Classmates

We created a few questions to help students get to know one another.  They had fun playing "two truths and a lie" and then discussing thing such as pets and books.

STATION #3

                   

 

We used this Student Survey to help us get to know our students a little better.  I loved their answers to the first question about who they look up to and why.

STATION #4

This activity from Lindsay Perro is designed to be six different stations.  The students color a different section of their paper based on their information at each station.  For example color the circles blue if you are the oldest child, green if you are the middle child, red if you are the youngest child, or orange if you are an only child.  We put it all together as one station.  Our students did not have time to finish it like this and we ended up telling them they could finish it however they wanted.  They are using their finished product as a cover for their Math binder.

STATION #5

In a Perfect World

In this station we asked our students to think about, write about, and discuss what our classroom would look like in a perfect world.  We used their answers and discussions on Tuesday to discuss as a whole group and create a class contract.  My coteacher is using their answers to create a wordle to hang in our classroom.

So there you go.  That's what we did on the first day of school.  The students did all the work and we didn't go home exhausted.  I will never do another first day of school without stations.

If you did stations on the first day of school I would love to hear about it.  Leave me a comment please. :)

Or if you have any questions about the stations we did, leave me a comment about that too.  

Hope you have a great year!