Things to cover during week 1

1. Classroom logistics
   1. When students can get up and wander around the room and what they can do while wandering
   2. How group-work/ collaborative groups will function
   3. Students should be getting familiar with the daily routine: agenda, warm-up, main activity, closing event, dismissal procedure
2. Academic expectations
   1. Do your students know you believe they are academically capable of any challenge you give them? If not, find a way to communicate it.
3. Academic policies
   1. Late homework
   2. Make-up tests, if any
   3. Cheating
4. Lab expectations
   1. How to get equipment for the lab
   2. How to clean up after labs
   3. That you are keeping track of the equipment they use and the condition of it after the lab
   4. What you expect for collaborative work during the labs
5. General policies and class rules
   • Ultimately your students will learn what your expectations are by your behavior. You can print and speak all the rules you want to, but if you don't enforce them and if you are not consistent with enforcing them, your rules really don't exist. There is a honeymoon period with many students, often the first week, sometimes the first two where they are little angels. They are testing you and seeing where your limitations on classroom managemet lay. During the first week (and most likely into the second) pay very close attention to how you respond to all student questions, requests, behavior, or written work. That first week is establishing the platform for the rest of the year. You can always ease up on how strict you want to be, but for some reason the reverse is not true. It is incredibly difficult to become more strict as the year goes on. They earn more freedoms, they are not automatically granted them merely because they are adorable students.

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