First Week as a Middle School Teacher with a FREEBIE!

Well, I have officially completed my FIRST week as a 6th grade math/science teacher!!!!  WAHOOO!  If I had any doubts about my decision...they were squashed! :)  I love it!  I learned something this week that were a bit of an epiphany for me:  There was really NO HUGE difference between 4th graders and 6th graders!  They are still sweet, talkative, and hard working. If anything middle school kids get my jokes more. :)  LOVE IT!  If you follow me on Instagram (@immixingitupinmiddle) you saw that I even treated myself to a pumpkin iced coffee on Friday to celebrate!

I thought I would take a moment to blog about what we did our first week of school.  I was really worried about what I was going to do for ice breakers, so I had to come up with some new ones (some of my elementary ones were a little cheesy).  So, I hope that this gives some of you some new ideas for YOUR first week of school. :)

I used some GREAT math brain teasers from Stella's Stunners.  These were GREAT, and the students LOVED them!  We did the toothpick one, and the students had a blast.  Here is a picture of one of the genius ways one of my groups tried to figure it out...

These got my students up and moving around while working with other students.  You have to check that site out if you haven't yet!!! :)

We did some other ice breakers, like my 4 Corner Power Point get to know you activity:

They had a BLAST going to "their" corner of the room and mingling with the other students there to talk about WHY they chose the choice they did.  Here is an example slide:

We also put together our classroom puzzle for each class period!  This was a lot of fun, too!!

I copied all four sheets on different colored paper so that each puzzle could be four different colors.  The students filled out the pieces as a group, then mingled around the room looking for the different pieces to their puzzle. Once they found their group, they glued it together and presented it to the class!

 You can get this activity for FREE in my TPT Store!!!!

The last activity that we did that was SOOOO much fun was our Marshmallow Tower Introduction to the Scientific Method for our first science lab!

This went AMAZINGLY (aside from the sticky hands from the marshmallows!!!).  The students worked together really well, and had some amazing team work in the process.

Our tallest tower was 32.5 inches tall!!  Can your class beat that? :)

Last weekend I had a contest to have one lucky follower win a BUNDLE of my back to school goodies!!!  The winner is...
a Rafflecopter giveaway 

Congrats, and be sure to e-mail me so I can send you your prize!!! :)

Peek-a-Who: My Tried and True Teaching Tip

Happy Thursday!!!
I'm sorry for not blogging yesterday...now that we're safely in Michigan, I'm going to try to unplug a bit to spend more time with family, but I will be on here from time to time still. :)
I am excited to write about one of my tried and true teaching tips today with The Teaching Tribune.

So..with back to school only a few months away (kinda scary!  wahhhhhhhh) I wanted to share one of my FAVORITE back-to-school ice breaker activities.  When I worked at a summer camp for 3 summers in a row we always played this, and it was so fun (even for adults!!!), but I LOVE playing it with my students.  I'm not sure how it will work with 6th graders, and I may need to find something else.  However if anyone reading this is a middle school teacher, I'm open to your suggestion on if you think that it will work. :)

Here is how you play:

• You split your class into two teams.
• You stand in the middle with another student and hold up a sheet so both sides CANNOT see each other.  
• Then you motion for one student to come up to the sheet on both sides.
• You count to three and then drop the sheet.
• The first person to say the other persons name captures them to the other team.
• If the students do not know the other students' name, then they introduce each other and stay on the same team.

It's a GREAT get to know you activity, and my students have always loved it!!! :)  They even ask to play when it's NOT the first day of school.  I hope that you like this activity, too!!