SUPER Back to School Unit and Activities

This last week has literally been a whirlwind of excitement and nonstop activity! I am sooooo POOPED! I flew back from St. Louis Thursday and then left Friday morning to go to Wilmington (which is like 5 hours away from me) to go to a baby shower! But, over the weekend, I had a smidgeon of time to put the finishing touches on my new back to school unit! Whooo hooo! <----Insert chair dancing here!

It has 61 pages of printable activities including:

* Four Writing Graphic Organizers and Publishing Pages:

- How to Have a Super Year

- How to Be a SUPER Student

- Knocking Out a New Year

- My Super Summer Vacation

* My Super Traits (All About Me)

* Writing SUPER Goals:

- What are goals?

- Writing realistic and unrealistic goals

- My Super Goals

* SUPER Synonyms About Me

* Create your own superhero (You have students draw a superhero and envision the kind of the student they wish to be)

* ________ to the Rescue (Class Rules)

* Super Survey

* My Super Brain is full of Math Facts:

- Basic addition and subtraction facts

- Two digit addition and subtraction with regrouping

- Two digit addition and subtraction without regrouping

* Teacher To Student Gift Idea

* Compare and Contrast Venn Diagram of your favorite real life and superhero

* What is Onomatopoeia?

- SUPER OnomatoMEa (Students write five sentences about them using onomatopoeia words)

I took some of your ideas and just went with it!

It is available in both shops!

In keeping with my promise of sharing ideas while posting products, I want to share some ideas and activities of things I have done during the first week of school that worked well for me.

1) Have a paper ball fight! WHAT?! I know what you are thinking, but don't worry, it's all organized chaos! HAHA Have the students write one fact and one false thing about themselves on a piece of paper and then ball it up like you're going to throw it in the trash! Or you can even have them write one fact and one opinion about themselves and do the same thing. Then, you have a paper ball fight! Give them some guidelines, like don't throw the paper in anyone's face. Duh! And let em' go at it for two minutes! When you call time, have them pick up the nearest paper ball, read it, and have them try to guess who wrote it! It was so much fun last year!

2) Consensogram Gallery Walk - I have posted about this before, but I didn't think it would hurt to share it again! I take large sheets of chart paper and write questions on each one. For example, "What is your favorite subject?" Give each student 5-6 sticky dots and a couple of sticky notes. Have them go around the room and answer each question, placing their sticky dot under their choice. The sticky notes are for the open ended questions. Set a timer for each question, and rotate around the room until all the questions are complete! Here is an example: 

3) About ME Bag - On the first day each year, I have an artifact placed at each student group that is related to me. Students have to observe each item and discuss what they think it is and why they think it is important to me. This is a great Social Studies discussion about what are artifacts! Anyway, after each group shares and discusses their thoughts, I share how it's related to me and it's importance to me. They love getting a little glimpse into who I am! Last year I used a bull magnet that I got during my trip to Spain, a very old picture of my grandfather, my old YMCA daycamp bag, a piece of artwork I made, and my childhood Precious Moments bible. Then, the kids go home and fill their own brown bags with things that are important to them to share at school. I only let mine share 1 (the most important thing to them) because it would take FOREVER otherwise! 

Anyway, those are some fun things I do in my room during the first few days. I'd love to know what kinds of things you do on the first day!

So, with that being said, if you would like to win a copy of my new unit, I would like for you to share your favorite first day/few days of school activity in the comment section along with your email! Sometime tomorrow, I will use a random number generator to select a winner! Make it good!

I used a random number generator to select the winner!

Congrats Dani!! I emailed your packet!