My Top 5 Tips To Start The New Year Right!

Happy New Year!

School will resume soon and so I thought I'd share how I plan to #startstrong in the new year!

1 - First, we'll play an expectations review game.  

I write 11 questions on index cards and then the 11 answers on separate index cards.  Then I'll pass out one card to every student as they enter the room.  After everyone finds their NEW seats (which is on one side of an index card tent), I'll ask them to find their partner - all questions must have answers.  :)

2 - Next, I plan to read this picture book:

Click on the title to see this book.  This is an affiliate link.

This book is about how one person took what was trash and turned it into something beautiful.  This has a double meaning for me and my students.  We currently have a problem with trash at our over-crowded school and I'd like to open the discussion in what we can do to solve it.  Plus, I want to help my students realize that they can take what seems to be a problem and make something positive out of it in a growth mindset kind of way.  The way I see it, students need to see that they can take ownership of a "problem area" at school and turn it around.

3 - Then it will be time to set goals related to the trash and/or taking ownership of problem areas.  But not just any old goal that we just say we're going to accomplish - this needs to be for real with steps to accomplish it.  

4 - Next it will be time to think of one word that summarizes our goals and put that on the other side of that index card tent (that gave them their new seat) as a daily reminder.

I'll need to be patient as our goals will take time.  Plus, it will take patience as we review what we learned in the first semester - especially when it seems like the students have forgotten everything!

5 - Last, but not least, we will tie it all together to focus on what we need to accomplish in class.  In our case, our big state writing test is March 6th.  We will have just a little less than 2 months to get our game on!  

So that's a challenge that will require some creative thinking like the one demonstrated in the book above!   But I have a plan!
We will start the essay challenge with reviewing vocabulary using a fortune teller!  

It's perfect for making sure we remember our terms before we start a kind of competition to review all the parts of a text-based essay.  Consider this a writing warm-up.

We'll see how it goes!

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