Fearless and Fabulous in First Grade

PROCEDURES ,  PROCEDURES ,PROCEDURES      School is back in session and it's time to teach procedures.  Every child wants to know the expectation and every teacher wants them to learn the expectation as quickly as possible.  It makes things so much easier when everyone is on the same page.  The first twenty days or so is usually devoted to doing just that.      In these past few weeks we have spent A LOT of time talking about the "How to's" of the basics.  How to... line up, choose a seat, walk in the hallway, put things in our mailboxes,  use our crayons, etc...   This can seem very trivial and be very tedious work, but it's best not to assume that every precious child that enters your classroom understands these basics.  Working on simple things like what our voices should sound like, and standing still with our hands at our sides can be the difference between a calm and efficient classroom and one of chaos. ...

    I recently read a blog entitled "What's My Name?" by Matthew Arend.  It was so thought provoking!  The author shared a childhood memory of meeting a beloved baseball team while on vacation with his family.  He and his brother stood in the lobby of their hotel for hours asking for autograph after autograph until one player asked them the question: "What's my name?"  When they couldn't tell him, he politely refused the autograph.  The players reasoning was that if you don't know my name then why should I give you my autograph?  Great point, right?       In education we spend a lot of time focusing on our classroom, curriculum goals, personal goals, building goals, and district goals.  Hours and hours are spent in preperation for open house.  We take time to thoughtfully arrange our classrooms.  We make goody bags to welcome our new students.  We spend many hours getting our lesson plans ready for the first fe...