So if you follow me on Instagram you know I made a huge jump from 1st grade to 7th grade math (best decision I ever made btw). Our district had a 3 day week for students as the first week of school, so here is a look at what we did!
Day 1: QUIZ
On the first day my bellringer was a quiz!!! About me haha. My coworker shared this idea with me & I will forever use it! (Thank you to both of my amazing 6th grade math coworkers for helping plan with me!) I had students write their best guess. Then we went over the answers & whoever had the most right got candy. On the back I had 4 question templates where the kids made a quiz about themselves with multiple choices. They then swapped with a peer to take each other’s quiz. This was a great way for students to learn more about one another without having to ‘speak’ in front of everyone on the first day.
Then I had students complete a graph of me from Rise Over Run. This was a fun review of the coordinate plane & how to plot ordered pairs. On the back I had a little questionnaire from Middle school and Macchiatos.
Day 2: Teamwork makes the DREAM work!!
The next day was AMAZING. I have an Instagram post about this but if you really wanna get a quick idea of what this is- what the video below. Basically this is an easy way for students to develop group norms. My coworker shared this lesson from MathEqualsLove. (Scroll down until you see the 1-100 activity.) You give groups (ideally 4) a sheet that has 1-100 mixed up. Students take turns circling the numbers in order to see how close they can get to finding all 100 in 3 min. The discovery of how to help each other find the number, paying attention, being efficient… it’s amazing. Several math teachers at our school used it this year on the first couple days. Even next year when I do this & some kids remember the activity from this last year- they will still have to discover how to work with NEW peers.
Day 3: Tech Contract
On the third day we used chrome books for a math diagnostic test from IXL. My coworker typed up this tech contract & we used this as our bellringer.
Last but not least- I literally cannot remember what day I did this LOL but this was a little interest inventory that the kids liked. Some responses to what students didn’t like last year were legit- one kid said he didn’t like teachers calling you out for no reason or to tell you to quit talking when it wasn’t even you!!!!! #middles
What do you do the first days back to school?!