Getting Organized High School Teacher: Montreal, Canada

Set the tone on the first day by giving your students ways to stay organized during the year. Give them an organized plan that helps them to keep track of assignments, projects, responsibilities. Also give them a list of resources that they can access and use that can help them with any of the assignments, etc. It's also important to give them a way to get in touch with you if they need to; an ideal way to do this is through e-mail.

Opening Day Book Sharing 3rd Grade Teacher: Bangor, Maine

On the first day of school, share your love for reading by describing some of your favorite books with your students. Ask them to share their favorite books. Tell students that you will reserve a special place in the classroom that will feature favorite books and that these books can be shared with everyone. The books are for classroom use only to prevent lose, or damage. This can be done every month or every quarter. Introducing it on the first day of school sets the tone and emphasize the importance of reading.

"Welcome!" David: Philadelphia, PA

"Each day as students enter my classroom, I greet them with a smile and their name. After the daily morning announcements I mention some type of positive comment regarding just about anything in their day so far, and looking around at the students say "Good morning class." The children are accustomed to responding with a good morning message. It is amazing how these 2 simple things work."

"Sizing Them Up For Cooperative Learning" April Mason, 4th Grade Teacher: Canton, Ohio

"During the first week of school, I don't start teaching any content. I begin by playing educational games with my students and this helps me understand their skills. On Friday of the first week, I sit down and write a list of the level of students' preparation for my style of teaching. I assign number one on the list being the student who is the most prepared for my class and number 27 being the student who is the least prepared. You'll notice I purposely just base this list on what I observed in a week's time. I don't take what past teachers have said, just what I personally have seen. I then take this list and break it into three columns. Let's say I have 27 students: I assign number 1-9 in column one, number 10-18 in column two, and number 19-27. I then read straight across the list to determine the cooperative groups for the year. #1, #10, and #19 work together.

For some reason, the five years I have been doing this always works for all classes."

"Give Me A Foot!" Kelli, Pre-K Teacher: Dover, MD

Each child traces their foot, cuts it out, decorates it, and puts their name on it. On the bulletin board are several tasks listed on a chart. I attach the feet to the board in a random order, so that you can't see the name. This decides the jobs for that week.