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The First Day of 1st Grade

The First Day Of 1st Grade

What does the first day of 1st grade look like?
Happy day, friends! I hope this post finds you well and loving (or about to love) your new group of friends.  This year, it has taken me a few days to fall in love. My group last year was incredible and left SO high, that I am having to remember where they started. Tomorrow will be Day 5, so I wanted to take a few moments to share what Day 1 looked like in Room 134.
First day of 1st grade

Preparing for THE Day

My plans are very flexible for the first few days and honestly, I always plan too much. The first weeks are all about community building and procedures. The learning will come smoothly (and eventually) if these two are in place. You can grab a copy of my first day of 1st grade plans here, but please know I made it to only half of it (ha!) and the times are pretty much all wrong (My OCD-ness wouldn’t allow me to just put them in a list).

Since I won’t launch Work on Writing for several weeks, I do lay out all of my materials for the few first weeks until our schedule normalizes. I love being able to grab whatever I need and easily trade something out if it’s not working or we need something else (i.e. brain breaks).

First day of 1st grade

Starting Our Day

With school-start times being pushed back this year, we had a 45 minute window when students would be arriving with families. 45 minutes?!?! It’s a huge chunk of time and we definitely couldn’t color/write/read/anything for that long. So, I pulled out Crayon and Whimsy’s Ocean Animal Pattern Block mats and they were perfect! My friends loved creating ocean animals, and my new friends would trade mats when they finished. I had a few friends who weren’t interested in ocean animals, so they played with the blocks on their table. It was a *simple* and perfect way to start our day. Plus, everyone could feel successful at the activity!

After our families left (note – I had 0 criers this year!!!!!!), we learned how to clean up/push in our chairs/come to the carpet. This took one million minutes and dozens of tries. Then, I introduced our day’s “Game Plan” and taught our friends the Good-Morning song. As tedious as it sounds, doing his on the first day of 1st grade will set your school year up for success!

Our 1st Read-Aloud

Now that we were all on the carpet, we read How Will I Get to School this Year? It is a very silly book and a great way to level the playing ground. At this point in the morning, I don’t want to talk about going home because it will stress everyone out (myself included). But this simple, short book is a great way to talk about the ways we are the same. We then graphed how our friends get to school!

First day of 1st grade re aloud

First Day of 1st Grade Procedures

Now, it’s already 9:30 and time for a bathroom break, which requires learning how to line-up, split into boys/girls, and practice bathroom procedures.
First day of 1st grade procedures

Then, as an entire 1st grade, we have dinning room procedures practice with our Assistant Principals and staff that help in the dining room (Yes, I do have duty-free lunch and it’s amazing.) Do you see our imaginary trays?

Building our Reading Stamina

Coming back from the Dinning Room, it was time to launch Read to Self and practice our reading stamina. I introduced stamina as being able to do something tough for a long time without giving up. I talked about training for a marathon and needing to practice. Just like athletes, runners need to practice, too. We made our ‘Read to Self’ t-chart and decided reading was awesome because it is (1) fun and (2) makes us better readers and writers. We also briefly introduced 2 ways to read (1) with pictures and (2) with words. At this point, I read Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, so we could practice reading the pictures!

Our Back to School shelf is also in action and my friends love having access to ‘free pick’ and read-aloud books. Before stamina-building friends are aloud to pick one of these books but cannot return it until the end of stamina. Otherwise, I would have 23 friends up, standing, and moving during reading stamina! (If you search #1stgradebookshelf on Instagram you can see lots of our weekly bookshelves.)
After creating our i-Chart, I show students their book bins. They grab their bins, place their bin on their desk, and come back to the carpet. Then, when everyone has their bin I call a few students at a time to pick their reading spot… (That’s right, I don’t choose spots unless I need to. It cuts down on time, and for the past two years, it hasn’t been a problem.)

I turn on our class timer and say, “Go!” This year we made it 1 minute and 58 seconds before stamina broke… a solid start! This graph is actually after the second day of school, but it works! You can download your own stamina graph here. (To learn more about how reading stamina works in our classroom, you can read this blog post.)

First day of 1st grade, Reading Stamina chart

Brain Break – Math Style!

At this point, we were definitely ready for a brain break. We picked spots in the classroom where we had room to move and counted to 100 with Jack Hartman!

First Day of 1st Grade Pictures

Are you tired yet? At this point in the day, it was time for lunch and recess. During recess, I snagged pictures of my friends with this sign (I picked up the chalkboard at Hobby Lobby and wrote on it with paint pen…low maintenance is the way to go). The photos will go in the hallway where students hang their awesome work!

First day of 1st grade

After recess, 85% percent of our time was spent preparing for dismissal and practicing dismissal. I’m really not kidding. We reviewed how all our friends were getting home, practiced lining up, and practiced walking to our dismissal spots around the school. Then, after doing this, we did a whole-school dismissal practice. Friends, dismissing is NO JOKE! Thankfully, all of the practice must have worked because ALL of my friends made it home safely (#sweetvictory).

First Day of 1st Grade Portraits

We did slip in a first-day self portrait that will be the front page of our Writing Portfolios this year. I love the idea of having a year-long writing progress to show parents and Cara Carroll offered a simple way to manage them, so I’m game this year! (You may grab this page free here.)

First Day of 1st Grade Reflection

After a whole-school dismissal practice, we brainstormed what happened on our first day of 1st grade. (Note – I take a picture of this board and sent it via Remind Text to my families, so they have some talking points when their students arrive!)

Students wrote about their favorite part of the 1st day. I know it is a stretch to write sentences on the first day, but friends – I was AMAZED! All 22 of my students could write a sentence without crying. Our Kinder teachers must have rocked-it last year. Most of my friends didn’t know how to use ‘because’ (i.e. – the word ‘because’ is randomly stuck in this sentence…hehe, but everyone had a basic sentence. 🙂 Before having students put these into their home folders, I had a Speech Pathologist (who hasn’t started pulling kids yet) make a copy for me. This will be a great writing reassessment for me and a great addition to our writing portfolios. (You may grab this page here.)

Friends, the first day is definitely a whirlwind with two main goals – (1) have the children leave smiling and (2) getting the children home safely. If you think I’m kidding, I’m really not. Those two jobs alone are hard enough – ha! 🙂

With 4 days under our belts, my friends are starting to become ‘mine’ and this is a great feeling. The first few days, I always worry if I will love this group enough or as much as the last one. Every day, with every new moment, the feeling dissipates and my excitement for a new year grows.

So, tell me – how did your first day of school go?
FirstDayofSchool

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Comments

  1. Christa Swaney says

    What a great post! I totally know how you feel. I looped with my kids the past 2 years so I was really nervous starting back on Wednesday. I had an amazing group and I had forgot how young they are at the beginning of the year. It is going to be a good year, but it is going to take some time. Thank you for always sharing and giving your insight. I love reading your posts. I teach second grade, but I look forward to your blog posts! Good luck tomorrow!

    Christa
    sweetlifeofsecondgrade

    Reply

  2. Em Hutchison says

    It is so great to read about your day! You have some lucky kids. Thanks for sharing the ocean animals for patten blocks. This will be a good resource for us as well. Hope your next week is great!

    Reply

  3. Kristy says

    I taught at the high school level and even there we were told a successful first day is everyone getting lunch and everyone getting home! Everything else was icing.

    Reply

    • Jennifer says

      Thanks for sharing. On back to school night, I have students pick two books for their book box from our classroom library. I, also, have them count out 20 math cubes and put in a baggie. I can already see who can count to 20 and put that in my notes. Great books that you have ready to read on the first day. Love it!

      Reply

  5. Shelley- TheWriteStuffTeaching says

    Great post! I teach 2nd so it is sometimes hard to believe where they were at the beginning of 1st grade. I couldn't agree more about getting those routines and developing class climate as a priority. Without it, you are no where! Thanks for sharing!
    Shelley

    Reply

  7. Kate. says

    What a great post! Looking forward to using several of your ideas. Questions: You mention using "Remind Text" – is that an app? Would love your help in tracking that down and/or any input on how you use it! I've been looking into using an app called Bloomz.

    Reply

  8. Mona says

    I always miss my last year's class until I "settle in" to my new class. This is such a great post of first day of school ideas. Love your "How do we get to school?" graph. Will be using the Jack Hartmann video.

    Reply

  9. Tina says

    This post has SO many great ideas, I will definitely have to try some for my first class ever! If you have any other resources or experience you can share please post!

    Reply

  12. Michelle Holloway says

    You are wonderful to share all these great ideas and reminders for first few days of school!!! Thankful for your ideas and copies!!

    Reply

  13. Dustin says

    Excellent multimodal activities for the students! I help tutor some first grade students online who have limited opportunities for English learning where they live. Your ideas got me brainstorming ways I could incorporate more interactive activities into my lessons. Thank you!

    Reply

  14. Courtney says

    Do you draw and create your own adorable anchor charts or do you print them somehow on large paper? These are all great ideas, thanks for sharing!

    Reply

    • Catherine says

      Typically I draw a quick image and the boarder beforehand and then make the rest with students. Not a lot of time or effort – ha!

      Reply

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