First Day Ideas

Name Bingo
On my first day of class, I'm planning to play a Name Bingo with my 16 students.
I'll write their names on separate slips and have them choose 8 names and write them down in their notebooks for the game.


Time Capsule
I'll give the students a worksheet for them to complete with their personal information, likes and dislikes, favorites, and abilities. I'll collect their sheets and read the information (not mentioning their names) for their peers to guess who I'll be referring to.
After that, I'll keep all the sheets in a capsule (a Pringles canister wrapped in foil) and return them back to the students on the last day of class. I wonder if anything will have changed by then.


Storytelling
I chose "The Teacher from the Black Lagoon", by Mike Thaller. There's a fantastic YouTube video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuRlqN2aZow -  I'll show it to the students in class. Later we'll play Bingo with the book characters.

This elephant knows great stories. Let's listen to one!

A briefcase especially decorated for story time. What is the story today?

My daughter Clara loves the Backyardigans. I used this glove to make the puppets and tell her stories. Sometimes she tells me the stories.

Make a stage out of Styrofoam and craft foam for your favorite stories. Do you want to hear the "Old MacDonald" song?

Do you have a big box you don't know what to do with? Just cut a square out, wrap it with felt, decorate it the way you want, and make a great stage to tell your favorite story!

This is a great place for you to keep all your puppets. You may also use it as the scenery of your story!

Use all your imagination and creativity to tell a story. Use a beautiful scenery made out of felt, craft foam, and cardboard, as well as your favorite characters taped to a glove. Let's start!

Do you know Hansel and Gretel? This is the story of a brother and a sister. Their father and stepmother abandon them in the forest because they have no money for food. In the forest, they find a house covered with candies and cookies. Who lives in the house? A very bad witch. She puts Hansel in a cage, like a bird. She gives him food to eat because she wants him to be a fat boy. Do you believe she wants to eat him? Gretel does all the work in the house. She washes the dishes. She cleans the floor. She cooks. One day, when the witch is sleeping, Gretel opens the door of the cage for Hansel to run back home with her. They take all the food to give to their parents. They live happily now.

What's the name of that boy who doesn't want to be a big man? Right!
It's Peter Pan. He teaches Wendy, Michael, and John how to fly. They fly to Neverland, an island where the kids never grow up. All of them, together with Tinker Bell and the Lost Boys, fight with Captain Hook. He is afraid of an animal. What animal is it? You can see it in the picture.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This is my favorite story because it has my favorite character - the bad Queen. She wants to kill Snow White because every time she asks the magic mirror: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of us all?, it answers it is Snow White. What fruit does the witch give Snow White to eat? What does the Prince do to save Snow White? Do you know how to sing the Seven Dwarfs' song? Heigh ho, heigh ho, it's home from work we go, heigh ho, heigh ho.

A Prince with no love in his heart? This is the story of Beauty and the Beast. Belle, a very beautiful girl, decides to live as a prisoner in the Beast's castle in the place of her father. The castle has very special objects that can talk. There is also a very special flower. Is it a violet or a rose? The Beast finally becomes a handsome Prince when Belle expresses her love for him.