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My Plans for the First Day of Geometry - Part One

Every summer I seem to wait until the last minute to start planning. With two precious weeks of summer left, I've decided to finally give in and get working on classroom material! Cue the creative excitement and work-a-holic hours!

What better way to kick-off the planning than with first day essentials? For Part One of this two-part post, I'll talk about the two things that keep me sane during the school year: my classroom agenda and student warm-up books. I introduce them on day one! Those two items get class going, keep students informed, and keep them accountable. Possibly even more importantly, they keep me organized! I will link both below.

My agenda is a daily Google Slide that is a one-stop-shop for all things going on in class for the day. I travel between two classrooms, so I need a traveling teacher solution to posting my target, agenda, reminders, etc.


Quick notes about how I use the agenda and why I love it:
  • I change the background to fit my mood and the season (about every 5 weeks).
  • I keep a template agenda which I simply copy-and-paste to create a new day.
  • I keep two sets of Google Slides - lessons and agendas. My lessons are my agenda slides, but have more links and teacher-specific material that only I (not students) need.
  • Students always have access to the agenda slides in Google Classroom and LOVE it. They *mostly* know what went on when they were gone, and can click on study links I add for them to go to before a test.
  • Parents always have access as well! Below is a snapshot of my class site which has a widget that allows public access.
                        
  • It. Keeps. Me. Organized. I always have a place to view previous lessons. Bonus - I can easily share lessons with other teachers and administrators. BOOM!
Another classroom must-have is the student warm-up book I created. I stole the idea from a fellow teacher, adapted and designed it for my own preferences, and absolutely love it. I let students design the front cover to reflect their personality. The front material contains the school calendar and...drum-roll, please...a note-taking syllabus! So long boring syllabus that no student ever reads - hello cute little syllabus that students write in themselves! The rest of the warm-up book is for warm-ups (big surprise). I collect them bi-weekly on Fridays for grading. 

Warm-up books keep me sane because students know that EVERY time they enter the room, they look at the agenda (see above) for their warm-up and record/complete it in their warm-up book. It's easy for me to redirect students since they should all have their warm-up books on their desks. They get into the routine very quickly and seem to appreciate the structure and consistency.

One thing to note about warm-up books is that they take a LOT of paper to print. I print them double-sided with the last two pages copied enough times to cover the entire semester.

Want to know more about what I'm doing on the first day of school? Read up on Part Two!

Warm-Up Book
- Google Drive copy
- PDF

Until next time,
-Rosanne

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