First day!

I had a GREAT first day! I'll post more about this week later, but I wanted to share with you this activity I did with my kids today. We were with our first period class for two hours this morning while 6th graders got situated in the new building and we went over first day procedures. Teaching 8th grade, that went by pretty fast and I am glad I had this activity on the back burner!

I printed off 6 different statements and had the kids respond in groups on sticky notes. I was unsure of whether they would take it seriously, but they totally did. And, they had some answers that I didn't even think of! 

Some of the questions were: 

What do you want to learn in math this year?

What do you need to do to be successful?

What do you want your teacher to be like?

School is important because...

And a few more that I can't think of because I am so gosh darn tired!

I was fully prepared for the sarcastic "we hate school and we wish it was still summer" answers...but I never saw them! I think this helped them to take ownership of what they need to do to be successful this year.