First Week is in the Books

The first week back is in the books and it was great! It was wonderful meeting my new seventh graders but I forgot how amazing it feels to loop with kids. My eighth graders came in and it just felt like home. They are such an amazing group of kids and I am so fortunate to get another year with them. Today they were getting sad because they don't want to go to high school next year. Woah Nelly!!!! You just got to eighth grade... Don't fast forward time just yet!!!

I went in my class last week and quickly set up my bulletin boards.

I really love my , "What's Been Going on in the World?" Bulletin board. I have presented five national and international stories from the summer with no words. For a bonus activity for my early finishers, they can take a guess at explaining what is going on in the pictures. If you're interested in the template, click here. I'll be changing them out every month, or as my smarty pants eighth graders say, every news cycle.

The first day I launched with my getting to know you video...

 

And then had them tell me about their likes and interests with Play Doh.

 

 

On day two did the Survivor Island activity that Dave Burgess talks about in his book and my teacher buddy, Ben Brazeau (@braz74) made (I modified it a bit for middle school students). Of course I had to add a bit of my own flare too it so I made this super fun launch video.

I also got to us Kahoot! Which I totally adore!

If you haven't used it yet, it allows you to do online quizzes and surveys where kids can use a myriad of devices to answer the question. It's much like Socrative or PollEverywhere but it has more of a game show feel to it. The kids loved it and I was able to use it to collect that beginning of year data, like do you have a computer or tablet, do you have wifi, etc? The kids adored it and I love that I can download all my data to a spreadsheet.

Lastly, I'm super excited because next week we're signing the kids up for Google Classroom and the whole cluster is going to use it. The possibilities are endless!!!!

 

Did you try anything new the first week of school? Let me know!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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