First Day of 2010-2011

Today was the first day my new 4th grade students came to school for the 2010-2011 school year. I have 25 students in my homeroom as of today and they are all eager to do well this year. Having just 25 instead of 32 is great. I feel that I was able to connect with each one on some level today.

First days are so full of organizing, going over rules and procedures, collecting supplies, and passing out stuff, that it seems very little learning occurs. I was very happy to complete my first tech lesson (remember I teach math and social studies) of the year.

I did a lot of modeling on how to get the netbooks out of the cart, start them up, and access certain websites that I will be using often this year. Then I started my lesson on how to use Wordle to create an "About Me" word cloud. The students learned how to type text into a word processor (Open Office is installed on the netbooks) and then copy and paste the text into Wordle to create word clouds. They loved creating their clouds and were very excited when I told them we would be printing the Wordles from our new color laser printer. The bulletin board outside our classroom is now decorated with their "About Me" Wordles.

I was also able to administer a diagnostic math test and complete my first social studies lesson from the map unit. I feel we had a successful first day. Tomorrow I introduce them to blogging.