We start with half-days all week. I had the digital camera out and took photos of the students in the auditorium waiting to be welcomed by the principal. At the end of the year, I take the photos from the whole school year and on the last day of school we have a big slide show through iPhoto.
The Internet and server are still behaving. I cleaned up the old files from last year and made sure The Gimp will display the same screen to all students for the first class next week. One computer needed to be reinstalled. I also removed Safari from all the docks and set up Firefox to be the browser. I also set the home page to be del.icio.us/saintmichael/research.
I am going to have (for me) very large third and fourth grade classes. I'm going to need all my desktops (16) and laptops (6). I'm going to have to set out new rules for assigned seating to handle crowd control. Luckily, this is my sixth year and I know most of the pairings that will work well. I'm also instituting a cup system for help. Green cup up - all systems go. Red cup up - help. I will save my sanity. I used to split the group with library and with 11 in the room, the Mrs. Oro's were difficult to keep up with.
I'm looking forward to presenting social bookmarks to the fifth through eight grades and having them take the survey I've prepared. Fourth and fifth are also going to be writing in Word and saving on the file server. First through third will be working on Kid Pix and Kindergarten will get a welcome to the room, we'll sing a song, and they'll try out A to Zap!
The plans are in place.
The green/red cup system works well. I used it in a previous school. Here, the classroom belongs to someone else. My desk is in the library. So I essentially have no place to call my own, as I am an itinerant.I haven't been blogging much as the beginning of school overwhelms and I am sick to boot. Hope your year is off to a better start. Always interested in our classes collaborating...
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