As much as I love the long, lazy days of summer, I am ready to get the party started when August comes around! The planning, the decorating, the shopping I love it all!
The first week of school is all about creating relationships with your students and teaching procedures. Content and curriculum take a back seat to “All About Me” activities, teaching procedures (no, you may not sharpen your pencil while I am speaking.), and a little review and assessments sprinkled in!
Whether this your first back to school or your 100th, it’s always good to find a few new tricks to have up your sleeve to start the year off right!
I have come up with a few activities to help get through this first week with positivity and fun! I hope one or two of them work for you!
Back to School Booklet
I copy this Welcome Back to School booklet and have it right on my student’s desks. They work on it first thing when they walk in. it gets them working quietly. It also helps me take attendance and help any students who may be in the wrong class or are anxious about their new classroom.
The best part of this booklet is that it is independent and all about the student. Not to mention, it’s FREE! Your students can break out their new crayons and colored pencils and color away. Coloring seems to bring down their stress level as well.
First Week of School Time Capsule
This time capsule page is a little less involved than the booklet above but just as engaging. Your students fill out one page that focuses on their interests. I save the time capsule page until the end of the school year and give it back to them. My students loved to see how much they changed. Another option is to use it as a page in a memory book.
Yep, it’s free as well! Here you go!
All About Me! Classroom Banners
These All About Me banners are fun, simple to prep, and make a creative bulletin board that is perfect for Back to School Night! I love when that kind of stuff happens!
Students write their names and add pictures of things they like, their family, their house, and anything that interests them. Once your students have colored them and cut them out, I back them with construction paper. I then either string them up clothesline style or hang them on a bulletin board.
Here’s how to make them in PowerPoint. Or check out these I have already made!
One Word Banners
I love the “One Word” strategy of goal setting! Instead of setting goals for the year, have students choose one word to focus on this school year. This activity is based on the “One Word” series of books by Jon Gordon. He has a kid-friendly version if you are interested. (I am not affiliated with Amazon or the author)
To do this activity in your classroom, have your students brainstorm powerful words that describe character traits they would like to develop. For example, care, courage, friendly, focus, compassion, responsible, or patience.
Have students discuss what the words mean and what it would look like if that word described them. For example, “Responsible means being accountable for my behavior.
Being responsible means that I will be in charge of my behavior by not blaming others for my mistakes and oversights. To become responsible, I will write my assignments in my planner, pack my backpack, and think before I act.”
After my students have written out their “One Word” paragraph, I have them make a banner with their one word and paragraph. I then hang them in the classroom. I also have them write their word on a small card to keep on their desks to remind them of the word they chose.
If you want a ready-made version, here you go!
All About Me! Digital or Printable Project
If you are ready for a more involved All About Me project, this digital and/or printable activity is low prep and becomes an innovative presentation. Both the digital and the printable versions have nine slides or pages for your students to fill out. Once the students complete the pages, they can practice their listening and speaking skills by presenting them to the class. It’s a fun way to let students get to know each other.
If you are using the printable option, the nine pages can be bound together into a book and left in the class library or out a Back-to-School night.
Check them out here! Rather have a free one? Grab it here!
All About Us! Digital Collaborative Presentation
Building classroom community is one of the first “must do’s” at the beginning of the school year, and this All About Us project does just that. This digital resource has a blank page for each of your students. They complete it by adding text and pictures to their page. When all students finish, you add your page, a class picture, class expectations, pictures of helpers, and so on. You now have a fantastic class presentation! The best part, you can continue to add to it all year, and it becomes a digital memory book. How cool is that?
To make your own, create a presentation in Google Slides. Add a cute background, then make one slide for each of your students. Assign the entire file to your students, instructing them to add text and clip art to their assigned slide. (I give my students numbers at the beginning of the year, so they use that slide number as their own.) Once everyone’s slides are complete, you have a cute class presentation. If you’d like a glimpse into how it works, here is a tutorial I made.
Back to School Activities for Upper Elementary
The first week should be over-planned. I say that because I never knew my class’s characteristics. Were they fast finishers or reflective workers? Were they wiggly or calm? What was the level of noise they could tolerate? I never like having even a few minutes that were “blank space,”, especially at the beginning of the school year.
To help me get through this week, I created some Back-to-School Activities that I could copy and have with me, just in case. Some of these activities are independent, and others are group ice breakers. My fifth graders tended to be wiggly that first week (really, all year long), and I tried to alternate independent seatwork with cooperative group activities. I used both of these times to teach and positively reinforce excellent behavior, quietly working and sharing during independent work time, and respectful and soft voices when working together. If I could set the standards high in these areas, I knew we could work through the curriculum and learn with so much ease!
An easy way to get these types of activities is to collaborate with your grade-level team members.
Or take a peek at mine. (This activity pack truly has everything you need for the first week, and it’s digital or printable.)
I would love to know which activity is your favorite? Drop me a note in the comments!
Happy Back to School,
