First Day Back

Today was the first day of school. We began the day with our students from last year, with a sprinkling of new students mixed in. I was lucky. I only got one new student in my group. That made it easier to pick up on ideas and routines from last year and revisit them without having to reteach them completely. I will be teaching the routines to my new students next week.

I have been reading and preparing to introduce Whole Brain Teaching in my classroom this year. Last year, I read about someone using "Class-Yes" in their room to get student attention instead of the standard "Five" that we have used. It sounded like a great idea, so I tried it at the end of the year with my students and I discovered that it was way more effective with my chatty group. I didn't know it was one of the elements of WBT until I started reading about it this summer.

I decided to try using it again today. It still worked like a charm, so I thought it might be worth trying out some other things with my group to practice before doing it "for real". So, I introduced "Teach-Okay" this morning. It worked wonderfully. I was delighted. I wish I had known about this sooner. It would have made last year easier.

I have this group until Friday, so who knows what other elements I might introduce. I do now have more confidence that it is the right move for me for this year. I am very excited to see how it all comes together in the next few weeks.

We did some interesting back to school activities today and the kids were very engaged in them. I will share more about it later this week. I forgot to take pictures today.

I hope you all had a good start to your new school year. I look forward to following what is going on in the various classrooms.