The first two days...

have been great! I love my students...and, so far, there are only 20 of them...in.my.5th.grade.class! (Yes, I know...enjoy it while it lasts!) I'm dreading sending down that beautiful, little number when the secretary asks how many students are in seat!! (Hopefully that won't be for another week!!!)

One of my main focuses for the first few days was to create a class mission statement. Miss Bongers does a great job eliciting student responses using these probing questions. Using the student responses she created the class mission statement. Thank you Miss Bongers for the inspiration!

Using Miss Bongers' questions, my students found common themes and ideas (like the students in 4b). However, instead of me writing the mission statement, I modeled how to combine similar ideas/themes and write laser statements using the first question. (I explained laser statements as quick sentences that include the key ideas to answer the question. Short, sweet, and to the point!)

Being up to the challenge, the groups separated with their chart papers and started discussing how the themes linked together and what to write. Some groups didn't have a problem--one group was stuck, so the class helped write that laser statement when everyone was back in the reading nook.

We read all the laser statements together, which then became our class mission statement. (I still need to rewrite all the statements onto one chart paper and have all the students sign it...I'll post a pic when it's finished!)

The last task was creating the rules. As a class, we looked over the answers to the questions and from that the students created their own class rules! (The rules are as if I wrote them myself!) Of course I had to add in the last rule...Keep your dear teacher happy (a whole brain thinking rule!), which encompasses everything else!

I'm excited...I love starting fresh in September :o)

How have your first days or weeks been? I'd love to hear about it!