First day of school already?

We always have students for a half day and then they're off a day and then they come back for a full day.  Crazy, huh?  The first day is always a bit hard to plan for because you don't know the students, how long parents are going to stay when they drop off the kids, how early they're calling kids for dismissal, etc. This year, I had students do activities that related to our Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing book study: Tales of a Fourth Grade Something.  Students drew themselves with pencil,  traced with an ultra fine point Sharpie, and colored with crayons. This is the first year I've had students follow this procedure for drawings and I love how they turned out. Students had to color everything unless it is white in real life! I got this idea from Seeing the Whole through Social Studies.  After mounting the pictures on construction paper, students hung their portraits in the hall for others to see.

I use Seal 'N Peel to affix clothes pins on name plates (love the new black and white name plates!) and hang the name plates in the hall using Seal 'N Peel also. You have to let the Seal 'N Peel dry for a couple of days before hanging anything from the clips. I love having the clips in the hall because students can switch out their own work!

After laminating the name tags, I put a rectangular strip of clear contact paper to write the student names on. If a student moves, I just take off the rectangular strip of contact paper and put a new one on when another student moves in. By doing this, I can reuse the name tags and I don't have to take down the name tags that I mounted at the beginning of the year!

I also had students complete a questionnaire. On our first full day, we shared answers to see how we're alike and different. Later in our study, we filled out a questionnaire for Peter to compare him as a fourth grader to us!

And, of course, I read First Day Jitters. It always amazes me that some students have reached 4th grade without ever hearing that story! Even if they have read it before, they still love it!