Today was my first official day of teaching! Yay! I survived! 🙂
No, but in actuality today was New Mohawk Day, a day dedicated to freshmen (and only freshmen) to get them acquainted with faculty, staff, offices, classrooms, buildings, schedules, passing periods, lockers, etc.
I was assigned six freshmen and my first duties as a teacher were to
- get to know the students/introductions
- go over their planner requirements
- take them to the FEMA Room (auditorium) for an assembly
- do a tornado drill and fire drill
- explain all the Handbook policies
- walk them through their schedules/tour of the building
- help them get to their classes
- and finally, lead them to and from three end-of-the-day assemblies/pep rally
I did well! Here are my notes/plan for the day:
My first activity was a name game: Two Truths & a Lie.
I gave each student a name tag and they were to write their 2 truths and 1 lie on the back. Then they shared, we all guessed which was the lie, and then we shared one fun fact from our summer. This went well. A little shy at first, but it did help us to remember names a little better!
For the Handbook policies/Planner, I changed things up a bit. I created a jeopardy game of all the important information from the Handbook and faculty ‘New Mohawk Day Handouts’ and compiled them into questions. (See Easy-Peasy Jeopardy Game)
Here’s some of the information I incorporated into the jeopardy game (with my notes!)
Instead of having the students read the Handbook in silence or have me read it to them (boooorrring!) they played for Tootsie Pops and at least were a little more engaged!
Overall I think my planning went well. Hopefully my ninth graders know a little about school policies and where they’re going for the official first day tomorrow!