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Friday, August 31, 2012

New Student Writing


It's the third week of school and I got a new student.  Sigh.  It was bound to happen.  I had a few students drop right before school started and was down to seventeen.  I know, all you teachers out there with 32 students are gasping right now.  I've been very fortunate to have the numbers I've had since I began teaching.  I had sixteen kiddos my first year!

Anyway, now I'm up to eighteen.  I have to tell you that I'm OCD about certain things.  I assign my students numbers for the year, as I'm sure many of you do.  They get their numbers by an alphabetical list.  So my students with a last name that starts with B is number 1.  Well, I had my room all set up, names organized alphabetically, numbers assigned, name tags done.  Then I had a student drop the first week.  So everything related to number 12 in my room was vacant.  No big deal, right?  Except that I really hate that.  Now I have a student mailbox that's empty.  I have a random book box labeled 12.. empty.  Coat hook, empty.  Number 12 on my class checklists... empty.  And then when you get a new student, you can never fit them in and redo student numbers.  You just have to put them at the end of your list even though their last name starts with a C.  Anyone else have this problem or am I over obsessing?

Back to my new student.  She started today.  Of course, I found out just on Wednesday.  You never want to hear that the secretary has some news for you because you know it's a new student.  I was telling my hubby that I really wished her last name was something between K/L so I could fit her in my list as number 12.  This never happens.  But to my amazement, her last name starts with K and twelve is her assigned number.  How freaking awesome is that?!  Or am I just weird that I wanted that to happen so bad??  My husband just doesn't get it.

Here's an activity I did with my kids yesterday to prepare them for our new student.  I had them each complete a page to make into a book for our new friend.  That way, she could read about her new classmates.  I whipped up the page real quick so it's nothing fancy but you can download it here if you want.  Read some of the pages below (I blurred the names), some of them were super cute!





I thought they came out pretty good.  They wrote a little bit about themselves and a lot of them wrote about being friends with her.  I stapled them all together, slapped a cover on it and had the book laying on her desk this morning.
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2 comments:

  1. That is such a cute idea! I always feel like new students come in so nervous and having that sweet book waiting for them must feel so good! Thanks for sharing!

    Nichole
    Craft of Teaching

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  2. I totally get it! I had two students not show up the first day... #4 and #15. On the second day, I found out that #15 dropped, so (since they weren't used to their numbers yet) I moved the end of the list up one. :) I found out yesterday that #4 has dropped, but it's too late to rearrange. Let's hope for a C name next!! :)

    Leslie
    Miss R's Room

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