You're Finally Here! {Our First Week Back}

I've been waiting and waiting, printing and prepping, 

plotting and planning for my brand new class.  I've looked so 

forward to meeting them, putting faces to their names and

welcoming them to second grade. The pencils are sharpened, 

their desks are arranged, our room is all ready 

but where are they? What's taking them so long?

Meet the teacher night finally arrived.  

My shiny new second graders 

approached their new classroom to this...

Click here to find this book from Indigo Books 

Then something happened that has never happened before. 

Every.single.child asked me about that book.  No one was shy, 

no one was nervous, no wanted to know where their desk was.  

But everyone, with their bright little eyes opened wide, asked me,

 "When can we read the book?"  

And finally, after so much waiting, it was our first day! 

They're here!  They're here! They're finally here!

And we read our book.  The very first thing before anything else.

And then I asked....."What took you so long?"

I know our little bunny friend was bored,
 but not me.  I was busy!

As a little getting to know you activity after 
reading the book, all my new friends turned
to a neighbor and explained what took them 

so long to get to my class.  The giggles were priceless!

I have to admit, my class had some 
pretty good reasons for keeping me waiting!

We made these little booklets so they could explain.

While they were working I took some first day photos.

Later that day we played "The Bored Game" so my 
new friends could connect, carry on, compare stories and
find things they had in common. Hilarious!

On Wednesday, everybody chose their favorite reason 
from their booklets and wrote it in a
speech balloon for our bulletin board.

Then to get to know them a little better we all did this....

I make sure to ask everybody where 
they've seen words like this before!
I cross my fingers that the answer is,
 "In our writing! They're transition words!"

 On Thursday, we talked about idioms and 
found lots of them in our book.  

We worked in groups and roamed the room to 
figure out the answers to some of these questions!

One of the recurring themes, and one I like

 to capitalize on in this book, is time.

Our new friend the book character bunny talks about

how unfair it is that his readers keep him waiting. 

As unfair as having to go to bed when you're not tired!

So to introduce our journal writing routine and to 

take a baseline writing sample I gave them this prompt.

Later on, I asked everybody, "How's it going so far?"

I like to give my new class an outlet to express

their anxieties or excitement, and generally see how

everybody is doing.  These give me insight into 

where I may need to quietly intervene and help

a child socially, or give extra TLC to support them

 emotionally. I  make copies of these and place them 

in their writing portfolios to compare to later 

to determine writing growth.

On Friday, I finished our bulletin board at lunch .......

and sent everybody home with a first day keepsake card!

  Besides being an absolute blast to use 

with your students, this book lends 

itself perfectly to a lot of thinking!

With lots of opportunities for getting 

students to think back and retell forward 

the events that lead them to finally being in 

my class, I also want them to think ahead and 

 set goals for the year. So we made these

little book character writing crafts.

I then added these to our bulletin board.

If you're not completely in love with this book yet, 

you will be after you watch this{so stinkin' cute}video clip!
(Thank you for sharing it with me Jennifer Ayers!) 

click here 

If you'd like to do all of this with YOUR class 
you CAN! I've bundled all of our fun, 
into an easy to prep unit you can find {HERE}

The unit includes many more activities not pictured
 in this post, plus all the chart and bulletin board parts 
 you'll need!

Just click {HERE} or on the picture to head right to it!

Click here to find the book!
 on Indigo Books.com
on Amazon Canada

Click here to find the activities!
You're Finally Here! First Week Activities

Already started school? Pin these for next year!

Well, I already love my new class!  
How was your first week back?