First Week of School! Classroom Management Lesson and Freebie

Whew! I think I made it! Hooray! The first week is over! I actually had a great week. But am I ever tired! My feet were absolutely killing me by the end of each day! The only major incident I had was when one of my sweet firsties projectile vomited all over another girl behind her in the lunch line! UGH! And I had sent her to the nurse and they sent her right back! If they don't have a fever they send the kiddos straight back to class, which kind of irks me to no end. I've had this happen before (last year) with the vomiting after I send them to the nurse. Frustration! I mean I get that the nurse sees a jillion kiddos a day but when they are turning green at the gills? Isn't that a clue? My sweetie who was vomited on was such a good sport! Bless her! She just marched to the nurse and changed her clothes! I think I would have demanded to be sent home. Sure she changed her clothes but it must have soaked through? *shudder* she kept soldiering on! You gotta love the crazy things that always seem to happen in the first week!

So everyday we have been making anchor charts - What does good classroom behavior look like and sound like? and so on. I think my poor kids are anchor charted out! No matter how cute I make them! The behavior has been pretty good so far, so the anchor charts must be working!

By midweek however, the tattling was starting to get ridiculous! Thank goodness my first grade team whipped up one of my all time favorite lessons for classroom management! The minnow and whale lesson! Yes, you heard correct...minnow and whale. And we refer to this lesson all year long! The kids NEVER forget it!

First you start by reading the classic book by Dr. Seuss...

We then discuss how the little boy in the book likes to exagerrate..."stop turning minnows into whales!" his dad tells him. We talk about small (minnow) and big (whale) problems. I chop up some examples of problems and give one to each student. They are then supposed to identify if it is a minnow or a whale problem. Then they get to stick their example on the minnow and whale anchor chart. Our's looks like this..,

Like I said - I refer to this lesson ALL YEAR LONG! And the beauty of it is the students remember! When they come to me with a small problem, all I do is say "minnow or whale?" and usually it is a minnow and they go off to solve their own problem!

Download the problem examples HERE

Hope everybody enjoys the long weekend! I'm going to my friend's 30 B-Day party! Woohoo!

Well, my hubs is harassing me about needing the computer to look up football scores! Football madness begins! *sigh*
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