The First Day in 4th Class

I know for a lot of new teachers and even teachers just getting back into school after the summer holidays, the first few days back can seem daunting. So I am going to take you through how I am going to spend the first day with 4th class. The children in our class start back on the Thursday this year so day 1 and 2 will be very soft starts before we start to develop some routine the following week. The focus of the learning will very much be around expectations and procedures over these days and will be reinforced during any activities that I am doing.

8.50 – 9.10 Mindful Colouring & Class Wordsearch

I am a big fan of starting my mornings with a soft start but especially so on the first day of school. You can check out this post where I go through what a usual morning routine would look like for me with morning tubs. On the first day of school I want the children to have time to chat and catch up when they come in and I will give them two options of what they can do. Firstly a mindful colouring sheet which is personalised with their name. There are similar editable versions on twinkl.com here. This colouring sheet will be used then as the cover for their wellbeing copy. Next they have the option of doing a wordsearch to find the names of everyone in the class. You can find the link to making your own wordsearch for free here. These options mean that students don’t require any assistance from me and I am free to move around and chat to everyone and get a feel for how they all feel on the first day back.

During this time I will also go over the call and repeat with my class. The one I use is ‘1, 2, 3, eyes on me’, ‘1, 2, eyes on you’. I have taught this class previously so they already have used this before but I will remind them during this time of why we use it and what is expected of them when I use it in the class. We will practice it a few times and I will give out points to reinforce it on Class Dojo.

9.10 – 9.40 Read Aloud & First Day Feelings Worksheet

Next I will read ‘A Letter from Your Teacher on the first day of school’. (Affiliate Link)This will lead us to a discussion about how everyone is feeling about the new school year, what they’re looking forward to and any concerns that they have. After this they will do the First Day Feelings worksheet. This is a freebie on mash and is available to download here.

As with any read aloud that I do, we will review the vocabulary of the parts of a book such as the author, illustrator, illustrations, blurb, spine and we will take note of any wow words that we come across during our reading and write these on our wow words whiteboard.

9.40 – 10.10 Expectations & Class Rules

To start they will discuss in pairs what their expectations are in a good teacher, good students, and good classmate. I will give each student 3 post-it notes and they can chat with their partner or group about the qualities they think each of these should have. After we will pop all their suggestions for each on the board and begin to talk about what we each need to do to make our class a safe and welcoming space for all where everyone can do their best work. We will come up with a set of rules, I don’t like to have a big long list, I prefer to sum it up in about 3 different rules that encompass everything and I use positive language rather than we will not or do not. Last year we were able to use: We will make choices that help us do our best learning, we will be kind and take care of each other, and we will do our best and keep trying, even when things get tough. So each of the things we would have discussed like puttting up our hand rather than shouting out, using kind words, hands and feet, trying our best when we find things difficult, being respectful to each other, they all fit into the above and it was very easy to just refer back to throughout the year. I will probably reuse that poster this year, if it ain’t broke and all that.

Next up we will chat about rewards and consequences. This is the part they get most excited about and all have opinions about what they should be. I use class dojo in my class, it’s what works for me but I know this isn’t for everyone, and I do a whole class reward, group rewards and then individual rewards. So throughout the year we build up our class points, each tier of points is a different reward, these do not have to be costly. I usually use extra yard time, night off homework, trip to the local park, extra PE, Chess & Board Games afternoon and then the top tier is usually for some sort of class party which I work so that it fits in with our last day before holidays, so Halloween, Christmas, Easter, last day of school. I have done PJ parties, a movie and popcorn, pizza parties and so on. For a group reward, I do VIP boxes and a class trophy, so the table with the most points on Friday gets the VIP box and trophy on their table for the following week. This is just a box with lots of different stationary in it like scented markers, glittery markers, sharpies, highlighters and so on that they can use for the week. I do work it so that the table points stay very close until the Friday so that there is buy in and I make sure it isn’t the same table winning each week. Finally there are individual rewards, when student reaches 50 points they get a homework pass that they can use whenever they want. If they get to 100 points they get a yard pass where they can choose a friend and have extra yard time on a day that suits. I reset the points at the end of each term and we start again from zero coming back and set new rewards.

The points I give on Class Dojo reflect the expectations that I have. I give out points for kindness, perseverance, good lining up, making good choices, honesty. The final thing we do in our school is golden time. This happens for the last 40 minutes on Fridays and is a reward for the hard work during the week. During this time the children can play (I’ve lots of different games and activities in the classroom), they can use chromebooks to play any of the games that I have put on google classroom (these are all educational games that we use during lessons) or they can do art. This is where our consequences come in, everyone begins the week with their full 40 minutes of golden time. If students are being unkind or disrespectful they lose a minute of their golden time. If they lose 7 minutes over the course of the week then they do work during golden time instead. Obviously there are warnings given before I take minutes away and I have very rarely had to take golden time away from a child completely. If they have lost less than 7 minutes then they sit out of golden time for whatever amount of time it is and they catch up on any incomplete work.

10.10 – 10.40 Maths Games & Maths About Me Worksheet

This will typically be our maths time and I want to start introducing some form of normality on the first day. I will start with some games that we will be using throughout the year and to get the children moving around the class. The first game I will play is Don’t Say 21. For anyone not familiar with this game, all students stand up, they take it in turns to say either one number, two numbers, or three numbers, in order starting with the number 1. The aim of the game is not to be the one who lands on the number 21. When someone says 21 they are out and the game starts again from the next person. The children need to be trying to figure out how many numbers to say to keep them safe in the game. I usually pick the first couple of people out of the game to come and help me lead the game. Either you could continue this game until there is only 1 student left or you could set a timer and whoever is left standing by the time it goes off can be winners.

Next we will play the Dice game. For this game the class is split into groups, I usually just keep them in their table groups. Each group will roll a dice and when it lands, they decide if they want to keep the unit it has landed on, for example 3 or if they want to multiply that number by 10 and choose 30 instead. Each group will take it in turns to roll the dice 4 times. At the end, the group with who are the closest to the number 100 will win the game. This game encourages maths talk in the classroom as students try to convince their team members to pick a certain number. It also allows for mental maths as students are quickly working out how much they need to get closest to 100.

After this I will show them the worksheet which is maths all about themselves. This worksheet covers some place value and operations from 3rd class. It gives us an opportunity to go back over some of this and introduce some of what we will be revising the following week. Each student’s sheet will be personal to them as they will be dealing with some different numbers, like how many people in their family, their birthday date, the letters in their name and so on. This worksheet is available as part of first day back bundle here.

Finally I will end with Place Value Last One Standing. For this each student will get a post-it note and they need to write down any number between 1 and 9999. They keep their number to themselves. I will then start calling out different place values, for example, if you have 7 in the units place sit down, I write these on the board in their correct place units, tens, hundreds and thousands and as I call each one a students sit down if it is part of their number and we continue until there is only 1 or 2 left standing.

These games don’t require any preperation beforehand and very little resources, only a dice for the dice game, post-it notes for the last one standing, and a whiteboard marker to keep count on the board. They are easy games to slip into any maths lesson as a warm up or throughout the lesson as a movement or brain break. I will use this time to also talk about winning and losing in the class and the expectations around both.

Read Aloud & My Favourites Worksheet

After break I will read The Day You Begin book (affiliate link). This book celebrates inclusivity and uniqueness. We can have a class conversation around the message in the book and this will lead nicely into what makes us unique and what we share in common with others. I will then show children the favourite things worksheet and explain what needs to be filled in. This sheet is an easy and quick way for me to get to know the students a bit better and to incorporate some of their answers into our classroom. I will make a class playlist with some of their favourite songs, I can make sure some of their favourite books and authors are available in our class library, I can personalise some of their resources during the year with their favourite colour, have their favourite treat for them on their birthday and so on. It also gets students talking to others at the table about their favourite things and forming connections with them.

While students are working on the My Favourites activity, I’ll get individual student photos. I like to have these incase I need to use their photos in any art during the year or to personalise slides but also to see how much they change throughout the year from beginnning to end.

Roll a Story Back to School

Rather than the what you did over summer story, I will be giving students this Roll a Story Template. This is available as part of this bundle on mash. Today I will just be giving them some time to start planning their story using the template. If they manage to complete this, then they can start into their writing piece for awhile but these will also be continued the next day.

The Roll A Story works well as it is a fun way to get the children writing and for those who struggle with ideas for their writing, it gives them the bones of their story. This also will give me a good idea where the students writing is at and what mini lessons I will need to focus on first in writing workshop the following week.

Paper Sculptures

We will end the day with Cassie Stephens Paper Sculptures. I love this lesson from Cassie Stephens. I won’t go into much detail as Cassie has a blog, videos and templates all about it here which is detailed way better than I could ever explain it. For me this will reinforce for the students what we learned the day previous about using a glue stick. I love how these sculptures turn out as they all end up looking completely different but yet students can see that there are so many similarities between them in the class. This art activity will be done over 2 days. There are two templates on Cassie’s website that can be used for this so we will use the first of these which is pictured above on this day.

As an early finisher students can continue with the name mindful colouring sheet from this morning.

Brain Breaks & Movement Breaks

Throughout the day, when required, I will use various brain breaks, movement breaks & filler activities.

Filler activities are just that, there to fill time as it arises. Therefore I won’t timetable these into my day. I will be using Don’t Say It! and Would you Rather? as games throughout the day as I need to. Would you rather serves as a good movement break and Don’t Say It! is great if we have anything from 5 – 20 free minutes. Naturally activities on the first few days will run over or be finished quicker than expected, fillers like these game are handy to have on hand should you need them while you are getting to know your class and the time it takes to complete a lesson. Obviously you do not need these PowerPoints, these games can be played simply by writing a word on the board or by calling out options for would you rather and getting students to move to either side of the class.

Other good filler activities are GoNoodle but I would pick out and save your favourite videos so that you can go straight to them, students won’t agree on one video and chatting about it for too long or scrolling through videos only gives the class time to be distracted. Some good videos for a class who don’t like dancing are the Henry Danger videos on GoNoodle or the Run the Red Carpet ones.

Another one I use in my class is the Corner Game. This is just a movement break game. One student is chosen to stand or sit in the middle of the class. The student closes their eyes as the teacher counts down from 10. The rest of the students have to move as quickly and quietly to a corner of the room. When the countdown has finished, the student in the center of the room, still with their eyes closed, will point to one of the four corners, whoever is standing in that corner is out and has to sit down. The game continues until there is only 1 or 2 children left. If it gets to a point where there are 4 children left, they must all choose a different corner