Firsr Day Jitters Updated

In my first blog, i gave myself advice for the first day of school and they were:

1. Be Prepared!
You need to come to school on the first day and be prepared for everything, including having your outfit and materials ready and getting familiar with the names of your students.  You should already have the roster of your students before the first day, so you can practice going over their names and pronouncing them correctly.  Also, create a seating chart for them, only for the first week to help with getting to know who is who.

2,Just Smile :)
Relax! Smiling wont hurt anything.  It lets your students know that you're excited about having them in your class.  If all they see is your frowning face, they're already going to dislike you or think you're the "mean" teacher.

3. Expectations
Establish with your students your expectations of them and what they should learn in the classroom.
  Maybe even let them create the rules and write them out to place around the class so they can see these rules daily.  This way, they know what they're suppose to do because they came up with it.

4. Be Organized.
Keep a schedule for each day to manage time effectively.  If you have procrastination issues like me, this will be very helpful to keep track of everything that needs to be done.
.  The first day can be used for rules and getting to know your students as well as them getting to know you and each other using ice breakers.  You can start a lesson but its not necessary,  You all are both getting back into the routine of school, so they don't need too much being thrown on them the first day.  I never liked "learning" on the first day so wouldn't suggest it for my class.

Finally, expect things to go wrong the first day.  It's suppose to go wrong.  The important key is to breathe.  If something doesn't go as plan, don't panic.  Just try again.  The first day is important, yes,  but you have many days to try to get it right!

From observing in my practicum, I seen these tips being used by my teacher especially with the last advice, of expecting things to go as planned.  My teacher changed the whole plan for two class period because she seen that her students were bored with the current art project, so she let them go help the drama class paint their sets for a play the following week.  Sometimes as teachers you have to change your plans to better the students and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it!