New/Old Ideas

Back to work tomorrow! It's just meetings and classroom set up (which I already started) but still, feeling sad to be putting away my shorts and flip flops and knowing that I'm expected to be somewhere (early!) looking and acting like a professional, responsible adult. Sigh. 

Anyway, whenever I get mentally prepared to go back to school, I always start making a sort of internal pros and cons list of what worked, what didn't, what lessons could be recycled, what needs to be let go.  While going through this sorting process, I was thinking of one of my favorite units that I've ever done, my Restaurant Unit. I did this with my First Graders at The American School of Marrakech in Morocco, and it was one of the most fulfilling experiences I've ever had as a teacher. The unit encompasses all areas of the curriculum, social studies, of course, but also math, science and literacy. In Morocco, I only had 16 students and now I have 29 but I'm wondering if I could make it work with this class this year.

So on this eve of Back to School, I thought I would share some pictures of one of my favorite units of all time.

We made signs to promote the restaurant and posted them around the school as well as made invitations to send home to families. No judgements on the spelling! English was the third language for these kids, after Darija (Moroccan dialect) and French.

I split the kids up into four three jobs: hosts and hostesses, chefs and servers. They took their jobs very seriously! Here are the chefs prepping mini pizzas the day before the event. We did a breakfast shift and a lunch shift so the (tiny!) classroom didn't get too crowded. The mini pizzas were for the lunch shift.

A server taking a parent's order. They all wanted to wear chef's hats. Sometimes, you need to be flexible.


A proud server on her breakfast shift.


Bussers on cleanup duty at the end of the lunch shift.