Getting your school year started on the best, most positive note is always the goal on the first day of school.
How to do that? Here are 11 tips!
1 – Get to school at least 15 minutes before students arrive and get yourself prepared.
Develop a routine to set yourself up for the day and get your head in the game. (I’ve got some tips for that in this resource.)
When you’re there before your students and you’re prepared for them to walk in the door, you set the tone for your students. When there’s no “downtime” (while waiting for you to get ready), they know that they need to get down to business.
2 – Be prepared and organized for your first teaching block of the day.
Have any technology ready to go, teaching supplies readily available, and directions displayed on the board. Again, this prevents student “downtime” and messing around. Once your students get off track, it’s more difficult to rein them back in. Save yourself that stress!
3 – Greet your students at the door.
This may seem like a small thing, but it is incredibly important. Simply smile and say “good morning,” using their name.
Greeting your students helps them feel “seen” from the very first moment they enter your classroom. Greeting them allows you to see who might need a little extra attention or redirection.
4 – Teach your routines, procedures, and expectations from the first moment of the first day of school.
And then plan to repeat and practice every day for at least the first two weeks.
Before planning your first academic lessons, consider a plan for teaching your routines, procedures, and expectations. It’s some of the most important teaching you will do all year. Here is a free resource for teaching procedures.
If you need more in-depth help with this, see my Back to School Planning Guide and The Upper Elementary Teacher’s Guide to the First Two Weeks of School.
5 – Prepare to rinse and repeat with the routines, procedures, and expectations.
Be consistent. When you are consistent, students feel “safe” because they know exactly what you expect and exactly what will happen. It’s kind of like knowing where the lane lines are on the highway. (They might still veer out of their lane from time to time, but teaching the “lane lines” will help minimize that!)
6 – Be flexible.
Always have a plan, but be prepared for interruptions. Some activities or lessons may take longer than you anticipated, and you might need to plan more time for that lesson the next day. Some activities or lessons may not take as long as you expected, so be prepared with some “sponge” activities to use the time effectively.
7 – Get to know your students. Here are some ways to do that.
Begin classroom community circles. See my post here for step-by-step instructions on how I implement circles.
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!). Here’s a ready-to-use version of this activity on Teachers Pay Teachers!
Consider implementing dialogue journals. Here is my post about how to do that.
Learn more about your students’ likes and dislikes with these questions. Here are some questions you can use.
Getting input from students’ families/caregivers is also very helpful. Here is a ready-to-use resource for doing that.
8 – Read aloud to your students! Here is a link to some of my favorite chapter books and favorite picture books for upper elementary students.
9 – Give your students information about you!
Use a slide presentation to share more about yourself with your students! I call mine “The Care and Feeding of Mrs. Smith”. Tell your students more about you, what you love, what you hate, and 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 tedious, just share a few facts each day.
10 – Plan for movement breaks and stretch breaks, but stay on track! More frequent, but shorter breaks tend to be most effective.
11 – Initiate positive contact with parents/caregivers. Here are some tips.
To recap, here are 11 things to do to ensure success from your first day of school:
1 – Get to school a little early and get prepared
2 – Organize for your first teaching block of the day
3 – Greet your students at the door
4 – Teach your routines, procedures, and expectations on the very first day
5 – Plan to re-teach and practice those routines, procedures, and expectations!
6 – Be flexible! Have a plan for extra time.
7 – Get to know your students
8 – Read aloud!
9 – Tell your students about yourself
10 – Plan movement/stretch breaks
10 – Initiate positive contact with parents/caregivers
Need help with how to implement all of this in a step-by-step way? Take a look at my Upper Elementary Teacher’s Guide to the First Two Weeks of School!
Let me know how these tips work for you. Have a great first day of school!
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