The beginning of the year is a collection of bittersweet moments. There is excitement about your new students, classroom décor, and new classroom ideas! On the other hand, there is so much to do and every moment of those first couple of days are SO important. Here is what I have found to be the best way to set up my students AND myself for a year of success.
I believe in spending the first two days of the school year getting to know my students and letting them understand how the class structure works. I do not start content until the third day of the school year. This will occasionally cause me to fall a day behind my coworkers in our PLC teams but I believe that building those relationships is worth it. The better the relationship, the faster classroom transitions are and the more manageable classroom behaviors become.
Contrary to popular belief, you can get a ton of things set up in those first two days with your classroom procedures. Students can start to understand where you keep things in the classroom, what they do & don’t have access to, and your classroom policies.
On the first day of school, the seating chart is projected up on the board so students can find their seats upon entering the classroom. The desks are set up in teams of 4. After students find their seats I go around and have each student introduce themselves to me so that I can write down how to pronounce their name and/or and nicknames they prefer to be called be. Then we do our first team activity.
I like this activity because there is a reason why each one could be correct. This helps me see whether the room is got a lot of different ideas, all on a similar wavelength, or extremely indecisive.
Then we move on to a more in depth team activity. This allows students to practice giving group roles – which are frequently used in my classroom. Students pick a captain, runner, questioner, and counter. The captain picks the team name and keeps team moral high. The runner is responsible for collecting and returning all materials. The questioner is the only one who can ask me questions. The counter will count the pennies. This is the Penny Challenge.
Students work in teams to build a structure using very few objects that can hold as many pennies as possible. While students complete this I walk around to see who gets involved in the leading, the doing, and the watching. After time is up I walk around and have the counter see how many penny’s their structure can hold. I keep a day best written up on the board so other classes can see what the current record is.
This ends day 1.
On day 2 we spend a lot more time on the computers. We work on setting up technology for the classroom and getting all of their accounts opened for the websites we will use throughout the school year.
I take this time as an opportunity to tell them about other things we do in the classroom such as Motivational Mondays and Friday Fun Kahoots – both are free in my TPT store.
For the last half of class students complete two activities for me. Both Desmos and google forms are frequent resources used in my classroom and I like students to get comfortable using them from day 1. The Desmos activity builder really helps students see how their activities work and google forms is a frequent check in method. The questions asked in these activities are more than surface level and really help you picture the whole student.
Back to school Desmos Builder Link
Google Forms TPT Link
I hope this helps give you some ideas on how to start your back to school year. Good luck!
Ms. Pi 4 Ever 