Live and Learn: What I Do on Day Two: Back to School Plans

I have finally gotten into my classroom and am working on setting up! At the same time, I am getting materials ready for the first week of school. After posting about Day One, I have gotten questions about what I do one day two so I'm back to share some of those activities.
You will see that Day 2 is all about organization and routines. The activities I choose for day two are still very directed and I am doing a lot of monitoring and will continue to recognize and record examples of students being respectful, responsible and productive. I will begin releasing control and allowing them to work in stations later in week one. I do this very gradually, giving myself time to explicitly demonstrate and reinforce good behaviors in whole group situations first.

I think it is still key to allow lots of movement and variation on day two. I try to keep my kids moving from seat activities to ones on the floor and from whole group to partner or individual activities.

Here is what I have planned:

When they first come in, they will pick up the cover of their writing folder. We are the Wildcats so we will call this our "Roaring Good Writing Folder". They will draw and color a self portrait.

We will be using this page later in the morning when we get our writing folders and start working in them. This morning activity is one that everyone can do without help from me. Third graders love drawing so it should occupy them as I am taking care of all the paper work that will come in on day two. If students finish this early, I will have a word find with everyone's name hidden in the puzzle. They will circle the names as they find them.

If you are interested in looking at the writing folder materials. You can click this link:

Writing Folder

We will break after morning work for a quick Morning Meeting. I do a brief morning and afternoon meeting. It is a way to set the tone and then debrief each day. We will do a quick greeting, review PBIS vocabulary and read the morning message.

Then it will be back to our seats for a minilesson using one of my favorite back to school poems:

"What's in My Desk?" by Bruce Lansky.

Before I introduce the poem, we will talk about how good readers use strategies to help them read and understand stories and books. I will tell them that we will be learning lots of skills and strategies to help us become even better readers and that we will keep track of what we learn on the CAFE board and in our reader's journals. Students will set up their journals by placing a sticker on the front and gluing two dividers inside. Half of their journal will be for their reading notes and the other half is reserved for reading responses.

Here is what our CAFE board looks like at about midyear. In the beginning, there is nothing posted except for the letters C-A-F-E. As new strategies are introduced, a card gets placed under one of the letters.

I have these cards available for a free download here:

CAFE Reading Strategies: FREE

Now we will learn our first good reader strategy which is to PREDICT. I will have the cafe card in my reading apron along with a prop that goes with it. The prop is a plastic crystal ball that went with a fortune teller's Halloween costume. We will discuss how predicting is telling what we think will happen. Good readers look for clues to help them make smart predictions.

We will glue our first notesheet into our reading journals. These are sheets that students simply slice and stick (cut and glue). They get glued side by side in their reading journal.

We will fill out the note sheet and then do the practice side together.

. I will give each of my students a dry erase paddle and marker and we will go over the rules in using them. Then it's time to introduce the poem on the smartboard.

I will start by just showing the title and allow students to make predictions just on those words.

Then I will display a couple of lines at a time. Some of the words will be covered up. Students will use context clues to help them figure out what the missing word might be. They will write their word on their paddle and hold it up. We will practice inserting the words they write on their paddles to see if they make sense in the poem. I will teach them how to CROSS CHECK words. We ask: Does it look right, sound right and make sense? I will uncover the word and then go to the next couple of lines. Students love playing "Guess the Missing Word".

This poem is actually found in my graphing set. Later in the week, we will reread this poem for fluency practice and then graph what is found in our own desks.

Achieving Graphing Greatness

Students will get the poem to glue into their poetry journals tomorrow when we practice rereading it.

Now it's time to clean and organize our desks so they don't end up looking like the one in the poem.

We go over desk responsibilities and I show them a desk map. They follow the map to organize their desks. We talk about how keeping a neat desk will help them be a responsible and productive student.

Next I will give each student a writing folder. It has been set up for them with some ready to go pages in the front that we will fill out as we go through the year and some lined paper to write or glue notes on. We will talk about how writing is just like talking without speaking. I KNOW my kids always have lots to say and share...here's where they get to do it.

To help give my writers topics to share about in their writing, we will all fill out this About the Author page which will become a list of writing suggestions. When my writer's say, I don't know what to write about, I can direct them to this page. They can write about a favorite place or person, sad or happy time. No excuses! Having them complete this page will also give me valuable information about my kids. What is important to them needs to become important to me.

I have to be able to relate to my students if I am to reach them.

We will share some of our ideas and then we get to reading on in our book, Stuart Goes to School.

Before reading Chapter 2, I will reread the last paragraph in chapter one and show them some items from our story souvenir suitcase that relate to something that will happen next. Students will make predictions.

After reading we will place some "pizzazzy words" from this book onto our word wall.

Words like "anxious" "glum" and "cheerful" describe how Stuart was feeling in this story.

These are the types of words I like to put on our chart. They are synonyms for simple words we use everyday and will go a long way in expanding students' writing and speaking vocabularies.

After the read aloud it will be time for a lunch and recess break.

Afternoon is spent on social studies and math.

We will work on our unit about citizenship. Next week we will move to learning about government, but we start with a look at our school community and what it means to be a good classroom citizen.

We will talk about what it would be like if there were no rules at school.

This poem has lots of examples of why we need rules in schools.

I'll reinforce the word "consequence" that was introduced in day one and we will model this word using a gesture.

Then I'll have my students work on pulling out causes and effects from this poem and writing them on a flow chart.

Reason for Rules

Next it's math time.

Our first math unit is on graphing and data collection. This works perfectly for the beginning of the year. We will conduct lots of surveys and create all kinds of "favorite" graphs. This will help us get to know each other at the same time students will get tons of practice in making and analyzing picture and bar graphs.

But first we need to set up a math journal. Students will split it in half like the reading journal. They will create a notes section and problem solving section.

We always begin our math time with a problem of the day. Students will get paired with their problem solving partner and will work on a problem about Stuart from the book we read earlier.

Since this is our first try at Problem Solving Partners, we will discuss how to be responsible, respectful and productive during this period of time and create a chart for it.

I will cut these problems out and students will glue just the first one into their math journals and into the math problem solving section. We will do another one from this sheet tomorrow. Students will meet with their partner and work on solving it together.

Afterwards I will allow for math talk time and students will share their strategies for solving.

We will soon learn that there is more than one way to figure it out!

Our main math lesson is focused on creating and analyzing picture graphs.

We will glue this note sheet into our math journals and fill out the information.

Students have worked on picture graphs as second graders so this should be review for them.

Data Collection Set: Picture Graphs, Bar Graphs, Line Plots

I'll hand out the picture frames that they illustrated yesterday and we'll create a class picture graph on how we felt on our first day of third grade. Here I will review those pizzazzy words from earlier today and use them on this graph. We will create this graph as a class and then analyze it and write sentences to tell what we can conclude from the data.

Far Out Facts: Addition Strategies and Cards

I will reserve part a short amount of my time to fact fluency. Having automatic recall of the basic facts will help free up my students' minds so they can focus on the hard work of problem solving.
I will quickly review the double facts and we will play a game focused on just those facts.
I keep all my games in these drawers according to the math strand.
I have these drawer signs available as a FREE resource. Just click the link below.

Math Tub Signs

We will end our day with our first BAM time. This stands for Books and Me.
Today I will go over how to pick a good fit book.

We will sit by our classroom library where I have this display posted:

I will have a snack to offer them today: apples. I'll show them their reading treat and I will tell them that when I went to the store there were lots of apples to pick from. Some were green, others yellow and red. The signs in the store described them. If I wanted to bake with them then Granny Smith would be a good option. But if I wanted a sweet one to eat, Red Delicious would be a better choice. We will relate this to the picking of books. We'll talk about the different types or genres of books in our library. Then we will go through the keys to choosing a good fit book. I will show them how our library is organized and we will discuss book expectations.

I will give students this bookmark to color while I call table teams over to the library to find a good fit book.