First day of school!

My class is REALLY great! They are sweet kids. I have 17 students, all of whom speak Spanish or another language (Portuguese and Italian for a few) as their native tongue except one. This was fairly evident and I know I'm going to have to work a lot on connecting their background knowledge to new vocabulary. I only have one student that knows hardly any English at all but luckily I got to spend some time with her during new student orientation so I know her a little better than the other students. She's also VERY shy so most of the talking she did today was whispering in my ear, haha.

The kids are not allowed to speak in Spanish or any other language during class time, but they can at lunch and recess. This is going to be a hard rule to enforce because even in one day most of the students asked me: "Miss, como se dice ___ en ingles?" (how do you say ___ in English?). I tried to have them describe the word but in some cases we might have to pull out the bilingual dictionary! So far my Spanish has really come in handy in introducing myself to parents and talking with the school staff that doesn't speak English, so it definitely motivates me to study and improve because I know my grammar is horrible right now!

The day went by SO fast! I overplanned, as usual, but I always prefer that to having a classroom full of students and not knowing what to do next. We did mostly community building and learning the procedures and rules today. Also, everyday the students have a special (PE, art, or music) and Spanish class so there's about an hour and a half cut out of my day. Plus they have an hour for lunch, and 30 minutes for morning snack and recess! My teaching time is fairly limited so I want them to get in the habit of routines and how to move from one activity to the next so we're not wasting time. So far my "disappointed" voice is working well... I always like that better than raising my voice anyway. ;)

Now that my first day jitters are out of the way I'm really looking forward to tomorrow and the rest of the week and month and year! :)