While in a professional development seminar last week re: curriculum mapping, our speaker did a brief comparison to the amount of days/hours that American children spend in school versus students in other countries, most notably Japan. I don't remember specific numbers, but I do know that is was glaringly obvious how must less time we (Americans) spend in school with students, with all of our extended holidays, early dismissals, snow days, hurricane days, etc.
Taking this into consideration as I am planning my first few weeks of school, I am torn about how to deal with the first days, particularly days 1 and 2. I need to get through my course policies and syllabus, but I would also like to spend some time getting to know my students. My syllabus is rather lengthy due to the culture of the school that I am in (it is expected that you have a very thorough document in order to CYA), and it will take me about 40-45 mins total to cover all of the material.
This leaves me with a question: Do I speed through the syllabus and do 1 activity in the remaining 20 or so minutes, and then start with course material on day 2? Or do I take 2 sixty-minute class periods to go through my syllabus in chunks, while doing a variety of activities and games to get to know my students?
When the US already has stunted school years, is there really enough time to spend 2 whole class days on getting-to-know-you games? Or if I rush through the first day and don't take a whole lot of time to familiarize myself with my students as individuals, am I going to regret it later when I haven't really fostered the bonds and relationships I would like to have throughout the year?
Also... any fun/interesting/relevant icebreaker game suggestions? :)
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I think there is always time to create the communal environment in the classroom that is necessary for true group collaboration and trust. What if you combined the two? You could have students jigsaw the syllabus in groups. You could also intersperse some other icebreaker-type activities within the jigsawing. I've always been a fan of "two truths and a lie," where you tell two truths and one lie about yourself, and the group has to guess which one's the lie. Maybe it'd be nice to have something silly and physical, like "pass the button," where students have to pass a button down the row using only a toothpick. Depending on how close the students are or how comfortable they'd be, you could do a second round that stipulates they can only hold the toothpick in their mouths...
Good luck on the first couple of days!
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