{"id":1923,"date":"2023-07-30T15:22:54","date_gmt":"2023-07-30T21:22:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/?p=1923"},"modified":"2023-07-30T15:25:24","modified_gmt":"2023-07-30T21:25:24","slug":"first-day-lesson-and-activity-for-high-school-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/first-day-lesson-and-activity-for-high-school-english\/","title":{"rendered":"First Day Lesson and Activity for High School English"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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We’ve all been there.\u00a0 It’s the first day of school and we are looking at 150-220+ new students and we have to send home the disclosure statement and go through the syllabus.\u00a0 But is that really the best first day lesson we could be giving?\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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First Day Impressions Matter<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Don’t you want to stand out in the sea of rules and signatures and forms students receive on the first day of school?\u00a0 I know I do.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

That is why I always start the year with a lesson that makes the first day fun and gives students a preview of what my class will be like.\u00a0 I’ve wrote about my first day lesson plan for my mythology classes<\/a> before, so now I am going to share how I start my ELA classes and what my first day lesson plan is.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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PS - I love baseball<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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One thing I love to do is watch baseball games.\u00a0 I love the ball parks, the fans, the food, the smell of the grass, and the sound of the bat when it hits the ball for a homerun.<\/p>

To share a little bit of what I love, my first day lesson is to have students choose their own walk-up song.\u00a0 If you didn’t know, baseball players will choose a song that plays as they walk out to bat or for relief pitchers to walk out to.\u00a0 Fans and players love it!<\/p>

Check out this video to see what I mean.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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But we need to teach Literary Analysis in the First Day Lesson<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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While I want this to be a fun activity, I also want to teach something.\u00a0 So I use video clips of walk-up songs to teach tone and mood.\u00a0 Students watch the videos and identify, then analyze the tone and mood of the music and the lyrics.<\/p>

I feel like this helps students get a feel for what kind of teacher I am and what class work is like in my class.\u00a0<\/p>

During the lesson they will work in partners and in small groups.\u00a0 Within the lesson plan, I embed teaching the routines and procedures of getting into groups.<\/p>

After they watch videos and discuss the tone and mood in the songs, students get the opportunity to choose their own walk-up song.\u00a0 Of course they need to be school-appropriate songs. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>

After choosing their song, students analyze the lyrics and write about the tone and mood of their song.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Lesson Plan + Literary Analysis + Routines and Procedures + Baseball = Engaged Students!<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\"First<\/figure><\/a><\/div>
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I’ve done all the work for you<\/a> and found the video for you as well. You can purchase the lesson plan and student notes on TPT.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Building Community<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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All this to be said – the best part of this lesson is the community I get to build in my class.\u00a0 I learn a lot about the students through their song choice and responses to the questions.<\/p>

But the magic really happens throughout the year.\u00a0 I usually have 40-42 students and over the course of the year, about every other day, I play a student’s walk-up song as they come into class and get settled and work on the starter.\u00a0 I’ll share information about students from their getting to know you survey as well.\u00a0<\/p>

Try it out in your class!<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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First Day Lesson and Activity for High School English<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1924,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-secondary-language-arts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1923"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1941,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions\/1941"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educationispowerful.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}