This is the fourth year I will be implementing the First 5 Days in my class.

You may recall that my school is on a modified block schedule this year, meaning that some classes meet every day, and others meet for about twice as long every other day. How can I do First 5 Days if I see some classes for 5 days, some for 3, and others for only 2?

Teaching Empathy

The solution is somewhat of a band-aid, but it gets the job done with no time lost. I’ll explain using the five days that will be used for my “every day” classes, followed by how it will be used in the block classes.

The emphasis of the first five days is still on two things: (1) empathy, and (2) internet research skills. And I think I’ve done a good job at connecting these two seemingly disjoint topics.

I spent the summer researching videos and activities that would work well with my students, and the whittling process took some time as a result. Here’s what I came up with:

Day 1: Perspective – a video of the “moving sculpture” that changes from two giraffes to an elephant depending on where you stand, a video of cylinders that can look like cubes depending how you rotate them, an activity in which the description of a house has different meaning to a burglar and a real estate agent, a discussion of internet suffixes to gain different perspectives on the same issue from different groups of people in different countries, and a video of Simon Sinek’s bagel story

Day 2: Perspective – a video of 25 different world maps, a video zooming into a cell and out to the universe, an activity in which students discuss their meanings of words like, “tolerance” and “community,” a discussion of EasyWhoIs to find the author of a website, and a video from Apple about perspective

Day 3: Compassion – a video explaining where compassion comes from, a video about giving, a six-word story activity, an activity about the positive aspects of failure, and a discussion about Google search shortcuts

Day 4: Compassion – a video on compassion, a video about the link between failure and compassion, a guessing game in which a famous story of failure is read and students guess whose story it is, an activity in which students identify with classmates who have gone through the same failures, a discussion of the WayBackMachine and how we can better understand how people felt when tragic world events occurred

Day 5: Empathy – a video on the difference between sympathy and empathy, a talk show game in which one student is a host and the other has had something fictional happen to them, an activity in which students must create a fictional student with a personality and must determine what this students would think/say/do about school or life in general

Since some classes meet everyday, this is the schedule I will use for the first five days. In block classes, I will see them twice as long every other day, so this is what the schedule looks like:

First Class – Perspective (Day 1 & 2)

Second Class – Compassion (Day 3 & 4)

Third Class – Empathy (Day 5) & first math lesson of the year

It’s not ideal, but I am interested to see how it works. I will also be asking students for feedback afterwards, and I will share that in a later post.

Graduates Talking to Seniors

Like last year, I have also scheduled graduates from my class to talk to this year’s seniors about applying to college, and what college life is like.

This was a huge success last year, in that the seniors were less stressed about what was coming up in their lives.

I’m actually looking forward to Monday more than usual this year!!