First Day of School

We had our first full day of school today.
Al's experience:
My class has 21 students. It's the big Grade 5 class. The students are from 16 different nationalities ... but no Canadians.
I took an idea from Harry Wong's book 'First Day of School' and provided the students with 'bell work at they entered the class. They all had a worksheet on their desks as they came in. They entered, put all their new school supplies in their desks and started to work immediately. Not a sound was made.
The rest of day pretty well went the same way. The students worked hard and quietly throughout. All of them are great kids. No breaks though as supervision was required throughout recess and lunch. The pace needs to change up a bit. We got to school at 7:00 and left after 6:00.
Maureen's experience:
Maureen had a more interesting start. She was pretty nervous with the idea of teaching 6 to 8 years old rather than 16 to 18 years old. They had given her a bunch of unlabeled keys for her various teaching areas. She spent a large amount of time first thing trying to find the one that would get her into the equipment room with no luck. Before class started she had to find someone to clean up the monkey feces and urine from the gym floor. The morning classes went well but in the afternoon there was a torrential downpour. They had just done some renovations outside and somehow the roof drain got directed into the gym and within minutes the gym floor had inches of water in it. Maureen had Grade 2 students at this time and they started to cry because some of them thought a tsunami had hit the school. On top of it all she developed some stomach problems and had to run to the washroom frequently.

The photos are from our trip to Chinatown on Sunday.