NWR: ANY 4TH GRADE TEACHERS OUT THERE??

I've been teaching Kindergarten for three years and was told by my administrators that I'm moving to 4th grade

does any1 have any helpful advice or websites that help me out

what on earth do I do with them day 1? I can't teach them how to unzip their jackets anymore!!! (as you may tell, I'm sooo scared!)

i used to date a guy whose mother was a 4th grade teacher. on the first day of school she used to just do 'welcome to school and intro to the rules of the class' stuff and she also had like name games and stuff for everyone to remember each others names and the kids had to name one thing they liked to do and everyone had to repeat the people who went before them. It was really cute. I am an unemployed high school teacher but I have beginning of the year stuff that can be used for elementary too....like the Make a classroom constitution lesson. You can get the kids to listen to what the constitution is and how you are going to make classroom rules with them just like our founding fathers made the rules for our country. The kids can come up with certain rules and you can act as the 'congress' or checks and balances type of barrier and weed out the important stuff. Then you can print out the rules you all made and hang them up with pictures of you and the class.

I teach H.S, but maybe an idea for younger ones- you can 'ice breakers' on the first day? The best one is the autograph one. Each kid gets a list with different things people do/have done.

For example
'Has a birthday in september'
'never left the U.S'
'traveled to mexico'
'is the oldest in the family'

There are lines next to each one. The kids have to get a different classmate's autograph for each thing (but cant use the same person twice). First person to get all numbers signed wins. its fun and eases the 1st day nervousness. its also good for get to know you.

if you google 'ice breakers' or 'classroom ice breakers' there are other ones too.