First Academic Half Day and Parent Orientation

To start the academic year we just had a half day with students followed by an evening of parent orientation. I followed the advice of Steve Adams' "Quick Before It Dries: Setting the Pattern for Active Participation for Day One" article. In the 28 minutes we had I set up the room with chairs around the tables instead of past practice of all facing the front. Borrowing from Frank Noschese's lab group selection process, I gave students a card as they entered the room. On one side is the name of a president, element, scientist, car model, Disney character or planet. There are 3 or 4 from each category. Students were instructed to write their names on the back as they entered to avoid switching. Next they had to establish their groups by finding students with the same category and choose a table. The fun with all this is that many of the names fit more than one category. (Mercury, Ford, Lincoln, Neon, Saturn, Pluto, Cobalt for example). Students would ask me to which categories I meant and I would say, "You figure it out. You get to determine your groups." It seemed to go very well. Yes, we did distribute the syllabus and go over the highlights. That evening I had a whiteboard prepared and tried to explain how and why physics instruction was changing in 9 minutes per class. I told them to meet with me at the Parent/Teacher conference to compare notes on how it is going. They all seemed to buy in.