Kicking off the new school year

Today marks the beginning of my fourteenth year as a middle school teacher.  When I think about the fact that I have taught approximately 1300 students and that I have new batch of a hundred or so students this year, the enormity of my position and the responsibilities that come with it makes it even more important that I focus on remembering the successes from previous years  This year I hope to continue to focus on knowing my students and on growing a love of reading within my students.

In order to  accomplish my goal of getting to know my students today I had them create a list of adjectives to describe themselves.  The students then selected one of their adjectives and wrote it on an index card that they then decorated.  This activity took 15 minutes and as the students were working I was able to go around the room and visit with each student in order to begin to build a relationship with each of them.

Last year, I kept a record of what my students were reading and charted for others to see as well.  My students LOVED this and always wanted to know how close we were to meeting our goal.  I am doing the same thing this year.  My goal is for my students to read a total of 1200 books this year.  I can't wait to chart their progress.