First Day Ideas

Even after all these years of teaching, I still fret about what to do on the first day with my new class. Here are a few ideas, although I am sure I will have a sleepless night trying to decide which of them to use!

• Circle Time - getting to know each other; likes/dislikes; fears; hopes/targets for the year
• Discussion and writing about their holiday (old faithful)
• Writing one or two targets for the first half term - on a leaf, to go onto a display of a target tree
• Book/tray/locker labelling - keeps them busy whilst I try and do reading assessments!
• Names word search - getting to know you ( www.worksheetfactory.com has a wordsearch maker package for free)
• Name acrostic poems for display - choosing posive words like great, fantastic etc - good dictionary work here too
• Shape posters/pictures - using 2D shapes and coloured paper - can either make a picture of holidays etc or write about shape properties. Quick, easy and looks good on the wall!
• All About Me writing
• Print and copy title pages for each topic for them to colour (Romans, plants etc)
• Self portraits for a welcome to our class display (also use the digital camera for this these days!)
• Golden rules sheet - writing examples of things they can do to follow each rule (can use pictures for younger classes)

Basically, just things to keep them busy whilst I work with individuals doing assessments.