In my last post, I shared ten of my favorite back-to-school activities. In this post, I’ll share ten more. You might also want to check out THIS post about building classroom community.
I know that seeing lists of tons of ideas can be overwhelming. Just pick and choose what sounds like a good fit for you and your class this year and ignore the rest!
ACTIVITIES FOR THE FIRST TWO DAYS OF SCHOOL:
1 – First (or second) day jitters activity – you might use the picture book First Day Jitters to introduce this activity. Give your students an index card or a small piece of paper. Then have your students write down something that makes them nervous about starting school, but do NOT put their name on it. Collect the papers. As time allows, pull out one “jitter” at a time and read it to the class. Talk about how to overcome that particular jitter. This activity is great for kids seeing how similar their worries tend to be!
2 – Decorate some kind of door decoration with student names. For example, our school mascot is a gecko, so we decorate cut-outs of geckos to put on the door. This is such a simple activity but getting student names and student work (even simple artwork) displayed makes the room more personal for them.
3 – If you had last year’s students write letters of advice and encouragement for this year’s class, it’s fun to read those at the very beginning of the year!
4 – Create a time capsule! I saw this idea from Bianca on B Like Bianca and I’m going to do it this year. First Bianca explains a “time capsule” to her middle school students. Then she has her students use index cards to write about the following prompts:
~What is one academic area you would like to improve in?
~What is something new that you would like to do socially this year?
~What makes you unique?
She suggests that you use whatever prompts work best for you. Her prompts relate to academic, personal, and mindset goals. She also gives some examples to get kids thinking.
After collecting students’ index cards, she puts them in an envelope. Students have one week to revise their cards if they want to do that. Then the time capsule goes “live”. Label the envelope “Do Not Open Until (Date of Last Day of School)”. She then posts the envelope on a board at the front of the room.
Source: B Like Bianca
Another point Bianca makes is that this is a good activity to repeat at certain points during the school year, such as at the beginning of a new quarter or semester, or after a break.
Students really do enjoy rereading these at the end of the year!
ACTIVITIES FOR THE FIRST TWO WEEKS OF SCHOOL:
5 – Begin classroom community circles. See my post HERE about how I implement circles. These have been game-changing in my classroom. My post gives you a step-by-step guide to getting started.
6 – Use a slides presentation to tell students more about yourself! I call mine “The Care and Feeding of Mrs. Smith”. Tell your students more about you, what you love, what you hate, what you expect from them. Create a Google slides presentation of facts about you. To keep this activity (or any activity) from becoming too long and boring, just share a few facts each day.
Here is a great resource from Teachers Pay Teachers.
7 – Something I have done for the past two years with great success is to talk with students about all the things I do on their behalf (“my job”) and all the things they need to do for themselves (“your job”). This makes for a great T-chart that can be displayed all year long and referred to whenever needed! I saw a great sample chart on The Hawk Nest blog:
Source: The Hawk Nest
8 – A great way to decorate your classroom is to have charts or posters with information from or about your students. This truly makes the classroom “ours” instead of “mine.” These “We Like . . .” posters make a great decoration to keep up all year.
~First, brainstorm a list of topics that kids in your class love (might be sports, books, some kind of activity, food).
~Go through the list and have kids raise hands for each topic they like. (They can “vote” as many times as they want.)
~Narrow your list down to the top five to seven topics that got the most votes. (I usually choose the number of topics by the number of tables of student groups in my classroom.)
~Give each table group a large piece of white paper (or chart paper) and a topic.
~As table groups, have them create a poster that says, “We like _____” in the center of the paper, then illustrate the poster.
~When all posters are complete, allow everyone in the class to walk from table to table (a gallery walk) and sign their names to the posters that match their interests. (They don’t have to sign every poster.)
~Display these in the classroom! The best part: they can be kept displayed all year.
9 – Begin whiteboard messages. This is where you post a prompt on a whiteboard and allow students to write their response on a sticky note and attach it to the board. Take a few minutes during the day to read some of these aloud.
Another option is to post these messages on a Padlet wall and allow students to post on the Padlet. See my Pinterest board HERE for some ideas to get started!
There are also lots of good resources for this on Teachers Pay Teachers.
10 – Assign homework that allows students to share more about themselves. A very popular activity is to give students a brown paper lunch bag with a list of topics or ideas for things they might share. The trick is that everything that they share must fit inside the brown bag. (They can’t fit their dog inside, for instance, but they could include a picture of their dog!).
Then have a few students share each day until everyone has had a chance. These are great for kids to see what they have in common with each other. As students share, I jot down notes for myself about each student. This allows me to look for ways to incorporate student interests in academic work throughout the year.
Here’s a ready-to-use version of this activity on Teachers Pay Teachers!
I hope these ideas have helped! In the next few days, I will post more ideas for starting academic subjects while still building classroom community.