Preparing for the first day of school and so much more!

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So it's 58 days before school starts and I'm really excited!

I've been reading several teacher blogs and have tremendously learned a lot. Things such as, while it's summer break what should I be doing? What should I prepare for the first day? What procedures do I want practiced in class? Truly, there are 3,000 decisions a teacher has to do in a day (maybe more)!

First of all, I've been preparing the list of topics to be covered based on CCSS (Common Core State Standards). I'm fairly new to CCSS and so I've been doing a lot of reading about what it is and how teachers are applying it in the classroom.. At the same time, I've been also reading and researching about PBL (project based learning) as this is what the school I am in is practicing. This is very interesting because I too agree and believe that we learn by doing and not mere rotary memorization.

Next, I've been thinking about preparing for the first day of classes. There are a lot running in my mind. For instance, how will I introduce myself? What things do I share and not share with them? How do I get to know them (Getting to know activities)? How do we discuss procedures we want implemented in the class? Will the seating arrangement be done alphabetically on the first day up until a month? How many forms of assessment and what forms are these? Do I give out several worksheets and a quiz? How often will we have home works? How many projects will there be? And so on. Wow! This is just the first day. Overwhelming as it may seem, I'm trying to list all of them down, sort them and actually involve the class in deciding on certain points. But my definite plan is to try and implement some of Harry Wong's classroom management styles. It has been proven effective on myself since it was used in our school when I was still in middle school and high school.

As of now, I'm focusing on the first topics to be discussed in Math class, that is fractions. So I've been preparing and thinking of activities for my 5-6th graders and 7-8th graders separately. Also, thinking and researching about possible projects to be used for this topic. I've had thoughts of a different form of assessment of fractions where in there will be a cross word puzzle, but instead of questions in word, it will be of operations of fractions and the answers will be equivalent to a certain word which will then be filled in on the crossword. It sounds overwhelming now that I've typed it down. Another idea that popped into mind is using fractions for Sudoku, I really don't know how but I'm still thinking about it.

For a project on fractions, I'm thinking about asking the students to make a reviewer in the form of a brochure, covering all that we will have taken up on fractions (definition of a fraction, its parts, simplifying, equivalent fractions, operations on fractions, and others). Anyone else who has tried this approach? How did you implement it and what is the contents for the rubric? I hope that this will demonstrate strong understanding of fractions because this time, explanation and examples will come from students.