New Year, who dis?

 Started my 20th year as a teacher. My to do list includes looking at my roster and trying to memorize student names.

I liked the activity I did today, but then I talked to a colleague about his first day group work activity and I liked his more. He gave each group a 100 piece puzzle, but with no picture to look at. He gave them 10 minutes to try and get the puzzle finished. Then he had them reflect on strategies that worked. Then they changed puzzles and tried again. 

I did the four fours activity, which he said he was going to do tomorrow. My students did ok with it. We did  enough that I can use it to start our review of order of operations and integers. I think I've got some students that have a lot of energy this year. I hope I can keep it directed towards math.