Back to School Night

Well, I survived week two of my teaching career, and I am still loving it! Surprisingly, so far I am not really stressed at all. Sure, I sometimes get there very early or stay late, but for the most part I am still super energized and relaxed! I am sure that won't stay forever, but for now I am really enjoying it.

On Thursday was Back-to-School Night! I was a little nervous having to talk with parents for an entire hour, mostly because I felt like they would ask me questions I didn't yet know the answer to. But, with the response "I don't know, but I am going to find out!" prepared in my brain, I tackled Back to School Night with gusto. And what do you know, the parents weren't so bad afterall ;-) There was only one question I wasn't prepared for and I was able to come up with a reasonable solution on the spot. For the most part, I think parents left feeling pretty happy.

Here are some pictures.

I decided to continue the Mission theme I did on "Welcome Day" on Back To School Night because it worked so well. On the right are a stack of pages ranging from field trip information to volunteering opportunities etc.

I of course wanted to make sure that the bulletin boards were filled with projects we have been working on. Here are the compass roses we made as a part of our beginning of the year maps/geography unit.

I also put up all of our newspapers.

Finally, here are the completed "Highlight of my Summer" paragraphs we did. This was the first "Writing Process" work we did where students first brainstormed, wrote a rough draft, revised, edited and then finally wrote a final draft. I had students write these in their best cursive and they also drew a picture.

My favorite part was having the parents answer a Did You Know with some of the content my students have been learning in Social Studies. I thought it was a nice way to show what we have been learning. I was very pleased to se that some of my parents did not know the fact :-)

Anyways, that was basically it. I made a PowerPoint and spent about 30-40 minutes talking about my classroom and sharing my expectations for the year. Then I opened up the floor for questions and allowed some time for parents to explore the classroom. And that was that!