First Day of School Plan/Activities

What are your first day of school plans and activities? Let me take just a second to share what I've got planned for day one of school this year. First of all, one of us will hold the door open for the students and greet them as they enter. This director will also hand each student a worksheet to fill out once they are seated. 

(This is what the worksheet looks like that they'll receive. It will coordinate with a Get-to-Know-You activity we'll do later.)

I plan on having the chairs labeled with the students' names. I'll just use address labels and mail merge to print them. I'll seat the beginners alphabetically by class and last name (my class in ABC order, then Mr. Bloch's and then Mr. Lemmons's). I'll seat the Advanced Band kids in chair order in their sections (how they'll sit when we start playing). The two of us remaining directors will help the kids find their chairs. I'll have seating charts already printed out and in my director binder so it'll be pretty easy for me to check attendance. We always check schedules on the first day of school too to make sure the students are in the correct class, so we'll be walking around doing that as well. This slide will be projected as students come in: 

A minute or two after the bell, we will start class by saying, "Good morning, class!" and will teach them to respond with, "Good morning, Mrs. Tucker! (or whomever addresses them)." We'll then teach the beginners our band mantra because it is our next call and response. We say, "Tennyson band students are what three things?" and they respond with, "Respectful, Responsible and Hardworking!" We will be able to just do the call and response with the advanced band kids because they have been trained to do it every day. We will then tell the students a little bit about us three directors (our backgrounds, what we want the kids to know about us, unique things that even the advanced band students may not know yet). I'll change to this slide so the kids can see how our names are spelled and put a face to a name:

We will then do the M&M activity. We'll walk around and hand each student an M&M and individually the students will read aloud to the class what they wrote on their worksheet for the color M&M they received (see slide below that will be projected):

Full disclosure: I stole this from Pinterest. I thought it was pretty cute! I like the random nature of it. It's the luck of the draw of what the students will have to tell the class. 

We will then briefly go over what the students need to expect in our class. We will go into more details about rules and procedures on day two. I just want to go over general expectations so the students feel more comfortable in their environment. Students, actually all people, like to know what to expect. 

And lastly, we will have an actual lesson - posture positions. For the beginners, they will learn and practice the positions we use for posture. For the advanced band students, we will practice and even do a drill down. :)

It's always important to have an actual band lesson on day one. The students will more than likely just be going over rules and such in their other classes all day. Band is a physical activity and even though it is a disciplined art, it is fun.