Made it Through Day 1!

Whew what a day!!!  I survived 5th grade and 6th grade!!  My students are great and I am excited about the school year.  The day went way too fast and the only thing that I was disappointed in was that I didn't get to the Marshmallow Challenge with my homeroom.  I planned on doing it with each class when they had their double block, but since my homeroom was first period, a lot of the time got eaten by back to school morning announcements, and learning how to do our lockers!!  This is going to be a big challenge for me and my kids.  This is their first time with lockers and switching classes.  I have never taught kids younger than 7th grade so it an adjustment for all of us.

Marshmallow Challenge fail

The biggest hit of the day was the Kahoot! quiz they played with the iPads.  I made a quick "Getting to know Mrs. Nehila quiz" and they loved it.  I tried to make everything we did into routine or procedure practice.So I was able to introduce them to the way we pick group names (color/food)  How to work as a team, how to use the iPads, how to play Kahoot! all while getting to know me and the classroom.  I planned way too much which was good and the day went fast.  I am hoping to get all the procedures and routines done this week and start math on Monday, but we'll see.

Two other interesting things we did were the do now and exit ticket.  

For the do now, I had them write on a sticky note thier definition of a fair teacher and place it on the chart paper.  At the end of the day I took all of the sticky notes and summarized them into a wordle.  It was really cool to see the results: 

I love it, this idea I got from Charity Stephens' blog and can't wait to share it with my students!