First Day of School: Who Are My Students?

Our first day of school just ended, it is quite a challenge just getting the students in, taking roll and hoping to make a positive impression. I prepared and displayed seating chart so students had a place prepared for them (unless the classes were oversized which most were). I had procured iPads and charged them all up and put my questionnaire Google form on it, so my students had something useful to do. When they finished that pretty quickly, I started a Kahoot quiz game based on the Nature of Science unit that I’m going to start with. Not bad for a 40 minute class period.

The day went great, now I just need a few week to process the info, the names alone take me several months. Tomorrow we’re going to do Council and maybe some of the cool icebreakers I purchased from Jennifer Rodriguez  (Blobs and Lines, Concentric Circles, This or That).  Then on Thursday and Friday I will cram for the Eclipse. We purchased safety viewing glasses for all 1900 of our students (!)  but haven’t really planned how (or even if) to manage the actual event. The morning recess goes from 9:57 to 10:12.  The peak of our partial eclipse view is 10:19, so I suggested we move homeroom to that time, or plan to extend the break another 20 minutes because who wants to go back into class just when the eclipse is getting interesting?

Anyway, here are some general results of the somewhat random questions in pie graphs that Google Forms generates. There were lots more questions with specific details, and this is just 6th graders (I also have 8th graders).