1st day of teaching

Today we did not have our Pre-k kids in the morning but we did have our Elementary kids in the afternoon so I got to jump into half of my schedule today. We trained and planned most of the day and I did not have class until 4:30. This was my 2nd grade class and I would be teaching them Grammar and Writing for the day. The only tough part about this schedule is there are things you need to accomplish for them to be able to do their homework and you only have 40 min. per period. We started by doing some icebreakers to get to know each other, which was a lot of fun. I got to find out how talented my 9 little kiddos were including an artist, pianist, violinist and some soccer and basketball players. We then had to get into the actual teaching part due to limited time. In grammar I was teaching the difference between sentences and fragments. My kids did really well with this and enjoyed the game I prepared for them. Then we have a 5 minute break and continue on into Writing. One child thought we had Reading so did not bring her book, which is like a workbook so this was quite a challenge to make sure she understood it all so that she would be able to do homework. I had 40 min. to go over how to write a paragraph appropriately and introduce their writing topic since their first draft is due next week. May sound easy but as I quickly found out they have not even been introduced to paragraphs much less an introduction sentence, details and conclusion sentence. I did the best I could to get that across in the short amount of time and told them how to do their rough draft. I feel like I blew through it and I really hope they all understood it. They seemed to but I guess we will see when they turn in their rough drafts. With about 5 min. left of class one girl asked me, "Teacher, why you don't turn lights on"? I had turned them off at the beginning of the first class so they could see the projection of their homework to write down and realized I had never turned them back on... minor details! These poor kids had been writing in the dark (well there is a window in our room but still) for the whole class. Also another funny story... Our writing topic was your favorite holiday. One of the kids chose Christmas so in the details section one of the questions was why is this a holiday... the girl turned to me and said, "Teacher why is Christmas a holiday"? I said to her, "Do you know Jesus"? She of course said no and I said well just skip that detail and pick one of the other questions to answer for your details. I did not have enough time teach about Christmas and Jesus I barely had enough time to teach a paragraph. I'm sure I will have plenty more stories Monday when our Pre-K kids come and I have a full day of teaching. All I have heard is get ready for the tears in pre-k. It's a lot of these kids first time in school, don't speak English, and don't understand why we look "funny". Let the good times roll!