Friday Funday

Lately Fridays are my best day of the week. For some reason the kids seem a bit more mellow. Of course it helps to have the weekend right within my reach to make the day a bit more tolerable. At the same time it often feels like I'm just going through the motions, trying to make it to dismissal without too much stress. Still, Fridays tend to go better overall.

Now I'm trying to figure out why that is, and see if there's a way to transpose that success to the rest of the week. There are so many factors going into a good day of teaching, it's hard to say any one thing I'm doing on Fridays is helping.

Here's what I can say I do differently on Fridays:
- I dress down in jeans and a button down. I doubt this has a major effect on behavior, but I do know the kids get really excited to see me dressed casually for some reason. If I dressed like this all the time would it help behavior? Doubtful, since the main reason the kids get so excited in the first place is because when I dress down it's rare.
- We play games. In the morning I usually try to substitute at least one "normal" lesson for a game. Today we played Science Jeopardy, a game I made on Powerpoint to help the kids review the last two chapters we read. It's still educational, but the kids don't realize it and they love the competition.
- I have lunch with 5-6 students who earned the privilege by being MVP's of the day or week during the past week. This also happens to be one of my favorite parts of the week when I get to relax and let my guard down and just interact with the kids as a human being.
- I have a class meeting. During the class meeting we reflect on what we've done and I usually discuss at least one issue we need to work on as a class. I also try to incorporate a mini-lesson of some type on community.

Obviously I can't incorporate all these things into the rest of the week. Some of them are only effective by the token of happening once a week. Still, I'm hoping I can delve deeper into my Friday teaching and think of a way to extend the positive aspects to the rest of the week.

Comments

NYC Educator said…
Sounds like you're thoughtful and considerate to your kids.

That's always nice to see.

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