Hi friends,
today I am going to be reflecting on my first day last semester with my grade 9 math class. This would be my second time through the new curriculum for the MTH1W course here in Ontario, Canada. I always find the first day a bit dry with all of the talk about rules, location of items in the classroom, getting to know you pages to fill out, and trying to learn all of those new names with all of the competing interference from previous years.
I always like to start the first day by actually doing some math. Sometimes the students are surprised that we are actually doing “work” on the first day, but what better way to get to know your students than by doing a review activity, that also has us talking about math? I like to start with this “Getting to Know Your Teacher” activity with six questions. I post the questions on the board and pass out a half piece of paper and have the kids split the page into six sections. They then take the next 15 minutes or so to complete the questions. I am always surprised by this part because I think that it will only take 15 minutes, but in reality, it usually takes double or triple that. Good thing we have 75-minute periods.
Next, I give the students the task to tell me a little about themselves by making six math problems to help me and their peers figure them out. I have students just use the back of the half page they used to figure me out. Some students will try and give simple addition and subtraction problems, but I try and push them to give me a “grade 9” problem to solve. They usually will give it another go, and give me a more challenging problem to solve. If they don’t finish this by the end of the period, I encourage them to finish on their own time, so the next day we can “do something with them”. In the next class, I ask them to exchange papers with a classmate and try to figure each other out. If students are willing, they can introduce their classmate by sharing some or all of the information on their pages.
I also usually take an opportunity on the first day to show or remind students where to find the exponent button on their calculators. We also have some good discussions about what they think happens when a base has an exponent of zero. I also usually notice on the first day that students are not comfortable with fractions, even though they have been working with them for years at this point. For some reason, there is a roadblock when it comes to the topics of both fractions and exponents. We will work on that more as the semester progresses.
The last thing I did on the first day, was have the students make tent-style name tags. Another surprise that I had to talk about with the class was that we can’t just fold the page in half hot-dog style, because then the name tag wouldn’t stand up. This led to a great conversation about the importance of having a strong base. An excellent segue to talk about a strong foundation of math skills because everything builds in math, and we need those prerequisite skills to succeed. After the students were finished with the sharpies and made their name big enough so I could see them at the front (a few had to start over), we practiced our first routine.
Our first real routine is learning how to pass things forward and over to the hand-in tray. I know this seems silly, but as the semester goes on, this makes for a fast way to collect and manage the class. I have each row pass their name tags forward. The first person puts the nametags in order of the people sitting in the row. Each subsequent row also does this. Next, the first person in each row passes the tags to the right (or whichever direction your hand-in tray is located) and the last person places them on the tray. The trick is to make sure that the first row is on top, then the second row next, and so on. So tomorrow when the students come into class, I will hand out the name tags and hopefully, they will be in the correct order of the row. It usually takes about a week to get this one down. But it is almost like a little competition to see if they can do better than the day before. I got the idea many years ago from a video I watched, here is the link (about 35 min in). I would then collect the name tags from the hand-in tray, clip them and place them in a magnetic hanging folder that is on the front of my teacher’s desk. This is a great routine to have in place when you have a substitute teacher.
That’s all for today, enjoy the rest of your day and hopefully, something here was helpful to you in your teaching journey.