That Crazy First Week Back

It's been so long side I wrote a blog post, I almost forgot how.  I have been a self-contained classroom this year and all the additional planning has somehow taken over any free time I had.  I had reverted to blog-stalking, but thought I'd make a go of it since I had some downtime over the holiday.

I'm thinking about the first week back in January.  After two weeks off, the kids will be tired, out of sync, and off schedule.  Some may even be jet-lagged, in my neck of the woods.  I've found a few back-to-school activities that may help ease the transition.  

New Year's Goals

Creating goals really starts the New Year on the right foot.  Here is an example of a goal setting template you can find for free at my TPT store.  

It would look great matched up with the craftivity show below.

 

I love this freebie posted by A Cupcake for the Teacher.  It includes the pattern to make the New Year's hat shown in the picture above. I like the idea of copying the patterns on white card stock and having the students color their hats.  



Write Your Own MAD LIBS

MAD LIBS has published the following directions for "Write Your Own" Mad Lib.  

This would be a great opportunity to practice grammar.  Ask the students to write a brief story and include a certain number of nouns, adjectives, verbs, proper nouns, etc.  

Snapshots of Winter Break

This freebie is from Aimee VanMiddlesworth.  Students draw pictures of several different winter break memories then write sentences or paragraphs about them.  I like the idea of writing "captions" (NF text features!) for each picture.  Thanks, Aimee!

Enjoy your first week back!