Back to school time is always full of hopes and curiosity. It’s that time of the year when new beginning, new kids, new challenges are in front.
Back to school is an exciting time when you want to have a good first impression to start the new adventures in a great form. Teachers wonder how new classes going to be like, students come with full of hopes, wishes and dreams. Parents worry, well most of them do…
We have the responsibility to teach their kids, to make them feel happy, valued and help them to explore. We have their future in our hands. Isn’t it scary? Sometimes it is. Well, I’m lucky enough to teach in a great school with fabulous teachers surrounding me and they let me teach the way I want to.
Most importantly I’m allowed to SEE the child. Not his exam results but THE CHILD! Behind the scenes. They let me shape them. So children will be growing up asking questions, challenging themselves, exploring, researching, collaborating and having the continues curiosity growing inside them as they grow.
But obviously we have to start it somewhere. So first day challenge, meeting the new kids, introductions.
I have a little bit of knowledge about the kids as at the first parent meeting I asked parents to help me a bit, write their child’s name on a piece of paper with any five words that describes them to give me a heads up. They were all happily staying and writing. One of them asked what was the point as obviously everybody would give me a positive description. I thought that also helps as in this case I can also see what they want me to know about their kids. Anyway, I love supportive parents.
It seems like I’m going to have a lot of creative, sport loving but stubborn students this year. I look forward to know them better and surely we are going to learn hundreds of things from each other.
With this knowledge in my head, I decided that instead of boring name tags only with students names on I’d ask my new students to design their name tags with symbols and pictograms that would represent them.
After sitting and creating their names it was time to stand up and walk around. Introducing themselves to each other, explaining the drawings on their paper.
To make the day less formal we also played a collaborative game in groups with cups, a rubber band and strings. It was a lot of laughs and screams. But they saw how important is to work together.
In the afternoon we all started to work on our Essential Agreement.
When all the groups have finished with it they presented their agreement to the rest of the class. We had a great discussion, debate on some of the rules that finally groups modified, changed or completely discarded.
This is how we finished our first day.
How was yours?
“Rubik's cube just makes sense”
- Vocabulary game: word ping-pong - April 15, 2018
- Exhibition reflection - April 1, 2018
- Assessment, some basics - March 19, 2018
Leave a Reply