You know it's gonna be a good year when you get a blog post on the first day of school, right? So I do actually teach a lesson on the first day--because I am the meanest teacher on Carpenter Road. Plus I have 90 minutes to fill. The first lesson is always about how to write a personal letter. Then they have to write a personal letter to me to introduce themselves. Genius, right?
Writing this letter isn't all that complicated. There's really only 3 formatting issues to be dealt with. In order to explain where the various components should be placed on notebook paper, I draw a piece of paper on my whiteboard so it looks something like:
Only mine doesn't look this good, because let's face it...I'm an ELA teacher, not an art teacher.
The point I was attempting to make is that when we write, we justify our words to the left margin. I'm nothing if all about academic vocabulary, even on the first day. I was trying to get the kids to come up with the name of the red line running down the left side of the page, which initially got me responses of, "It's a line!" and "It's a red line!"
Highly technical terms.
I said, "It begins with an M."
And a student in the front blurts out, "Oh! I know! Mississippi!"
*crickets*
*hysterical laughter as I bang my head against the wall*
I need to go back and review exactly when I began being a geography teacher, apparently.
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