Little Stick People & Some Manners

At the beginning of each school year First Grade has an interview day with incoming first graders.  This allows us to meet our students and their parents, do a quick get to

Stick People

 know you, and give them a tour of our area of the school.  1st grade is such an adjustment for the majority of the kiddos, that we cherish this first glimpse that they get into their upcoming school year.  One of the things I give my students during that interview time is a stick person with their name on it.  I tell them that this little stick person will be how they are chosen for different jobs in our classroom and that they need to take it home and make it look like them.  Sharing our stick people the first day is always lots of fun and a good ice breaker for those that are a little extra nervous.  I have seen some creative sticks in the past few years, including one with REAL hair, ick!  I pull sticks each day to do calendar/rug jobs and when I need an extra helper for things throughout the day.  I also use them in my classroom for our good morning song, which they LOVE!  This where I get the cute sticks.

My soon-to-be 2nd grader making a sample

Hello little friends!

Here is a copy of our good morning song. I think I learned it from my cooperating teacher when I did my kindergarten student teaching, but I'm not sure.  I use my good morning song as an opportunity to help my students use their good manners.  We sing the song 3 times.  I pull a stick to pick the person we will be saying something about. The first two times I call on a student to give a compliment to his/her friend.  After they give the compliment the person complimented says "thank you" and the compliment giver says "you're welcome".  The third time we sing the song, I give the compliment to a student.  I really model a ton at the beginning of the year what a GREAT compliment sounds like.  We hear lots of "I like your shirt" or "I'm glad you are in my class" which is great, but as the year goes on they get a lot better at it and we start hearing things like "I like the story you shared with us yesterday" or "I think you are awesome at math facts".  I really love to hear the things they say about each other and I think it sets such a great tone to how we start our morning and an environment of support and encouragement. 

Happy singing and stick pulling!