What do you do on the first day of class? Do you go over your class disclosure/syllabus with your students?
I don't.
Growing up I was always so excited for the first day of school but always left feeling a lot less excited. The first day of class seemed to always end up feeling long and boring because we would be listening to our teachers read through the disclosure in EVERY class.
Now that I'm a teacher, my goal is to have my students leave my class the first day EXCITED to come back. After all, first impressions are important! I personally don't think that reading through my class disclosure/syllabus will accomplish that goal. So instead of going over the disclosure on the first day of class, we save that for the second class period.
What I do the first day depends on the specific class. I teach four different classes as a Family and Consumer Sciences teacher. I also teach three different grades. I'll share what I do with my new 7th grade classes because I feel it would be most helpful for all secondary teachers, no matter what class you teach.
On the first day we do an activity where students write down assumptions about me by looking around and observing things in my room. Then students tell me their assumptions and I let them know if their assumptions are true or false. It makes it a little more exciting than me just standing up there and telling them about myself. I got this idea from Write on With Miss G's Investigate the Teacher activity. I have since adapted it to my class needs but I highly recommend her resource if you think this would be fun for your students too.
After that we play First Day Jeopardy. It's kind of like jeopardy... but not. It's got way more twists to it and it's really based on luck, not knowledge. It's amazing how into this game my students get! It warms them up, gets them laughing, and also introduces them to the class and what we'll be learning. I play this game with 2 of my other classes on the first day too but just change the categories and questions! It can also work as a review game later in the semester!
Whatever it is you do on the first day of class, I highly recommend shaking it up so that you do something FUN! I think you will enjoy the day more and so will your students!
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