Day Two: Boring and Crazy

How can one day be both, right? Well, for the first half of the class period, students had to take their summer reading test. This took up about 25-30 minutes. I hate test time because time just drags and drags. After their tests were turned in, I led students in a "Chalk Talk" to get them moving and to start opening up. The original purpose for the "Chalk Talk" was to have students think about and agree upon classroom rules for our period together. But, we didn't get around to the rules. I have a collab. teacher during 1st period (the "Talk" was something she did last year), and she wanted to get an idea of weather the students were excited or scared about their sophomore year. So, we just wrote "School" on the board, and the kids commenced writing their thoughts on the board about this year. Rules came up only at the end.

I think we might have another "Chalk Talk" on Thursday (tomorrow they have to write their summer reading essay) to come up with the classroom rules together. I think that would be a cool activity, and it will get me out of my bad habit of trying something once, having it not turn out exactly the way I wanted, and never doing it again! I need to get the students used to doing activities like this so they are more comfortable with speaking their mind, getting up and moving around, responding and interacting with each other, and thinking outside of the box.

On top of what I wanted to do with my students, I was also taking care of paperwork that is necessary at the beginning of the school year. That put an added level of hectic to the day.

A thought: I didn't put the kids into a seating chart yet because we didn't have enough desks on the first day. I'm finding that some in my ESOL class, especially, need to be isolated from their friends, and need to be around people who don't speak their L1. Tomorrow, I should go ahead and get the students settled into a seating chart. I don't want them to get comfortable with doing whatever they want. I'm going to put numbers on the desks ASAP, but I think I should get them in the assigned desks NOW.

We'll be starting a research project soon, so I want to have the class organized before that. It will make me feel much better when I let the students move around to work together.