The Grab and Go Back-to-School Planning Guide
Plotting Success: The English Teacher's Roadmap to a Phenomenal Back-to-School Start - Strategies, Resources, and More
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July and August mark the beginning of a new season of school. While many view this time of year with mixed emotions, the idea of back-to-school planning is often met with a particular groan. It is hard to narrow down what to teach our kids when we haven’t met them yet. We want to create activities that will help us get to know them, but we also have to balance building expectations, district expectations, curriculum needs, and any pre-assessments or standardized testing. The time blocks can fill up, and it can be easy to feel like time is running away from you.
This post contains 5 areas that you can consider when doing your back-to-school planning. Specifically, I will be talking to literacy teachers in classrooms grades 4-10, but everyone can pick up some of these ideas and apply the concepts to their own classroom. You can also feel free to steal my first two weeks of school already planned out in detail in this post.
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Goal-Oriented Engaging Activities
The goal is to get to know the kids. One of the single most important ideas is that the relationships you build in your classroom determine the outcome of success you have with the set of kids.
Back-to-school planning can be an exciting and overwhelming time! Here are some activities and an example brainstorm of the first two weeks of school. I recommend keeping the first day ridiculously simple, but try to use one of these activities as a backup plan in case you need to fill in time. Some schools run a shortened schedule or a half-day, so planning is going to look entirely different for each teacher, content area, and grade-level
First-day items to think about:
Attendance-Make sure you are saying names correctly, check for nicknames, and maybe do this in a fun way of a this or that question or a would you rather question. I always LOVED the would you rather question: Would you be the superhero or the villain? My answer was always the villain and kids loved that.
Map/Getting Around the Building-I taught sixth grade for 12 years, so this always involved helping them figure out where classes were
Important Papers/Registration Materials-These are great things to hand out on the first day that help you get to know names
Book Talk/Read Aloud-Do a book talk or read aloud on the first day. It sets the tone that this classroom is one that is focused on literacy and reading appreciation.
Recommendation: The Day You Begin by Jacqueline Woodson
Recommendation: The Magical Yet by Angela DiTerlizzi and Lorena Alvarez Gómez
Recommendation: Your Name is a Song by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow and Luisa Uribe
Activities to consider for the first day/first days:
Get kids up and moving with a 4 corners activity
Hand out a syllabus, grab a template in the Canva Templates section
Would you rather questions build community and add voice
Seating charts help you learn about your students immediately
Create a read-aloud and book talk routine
Text family tree assignment helps you get to know your students (see below)
How to complete homework and other classroom routines
Get excited with creative writing and a Friday Free Write
Get any pre-assessments out of the way
Example First Two Weeks
Text Family Tree Assignment: Find out what books and media are important to each student. Explain that reading and literacy is more than books and reading.
Set Up Successful Classroom Management: Practice Routines and Expectations
The beginning of the year is a great opportunity to take a moment to figure out the purpose of each part of your classroom. When I go into classrooms, I sometimes find that there is dead space or areas of the room that have no real purpose. Whether this be the walls, a corner, or an area that just seems empty, all areas of the classroom are opportunities for learning and each part of the room should have an attached routine. If you want to see my classroom setup, click here.
Examples:
Doorway: How do students enter and leave?
Bathroom passes: How do students request to use the bathroom? When is a good time? During the lesson? Before or after? Work time?
Classroom library: How do students check out books? How do they return them? How do they put back books on the shelves that they are not interested in reading?
Student supplies: Where do kids go if they need pencils, a pencil sharpener, tissue, or hand sanitizer? Where do they turn in work? Is there a turn-in bin or a folder?
Items to give to students: Where do you put papers ready to hand out to students once graded? I always recommend that this is away from your desk to reduce clutter. Will you have a spot for no names, like a no-name wall?
Recycling/Garbage: When is it okay to throw something away?
Technology: If students have their own technology, what are the rules regarding usage? Should the screens be open during instruction? If there is classroom technology, how does it get taken out and put away =?
Teacher desk area: When is it okay for students to be in this space? Can they grab materials if needed?
An easy way to fill empty space is with books and with student works once they start creating. Bypass the cute bulletin board and wait until they give you work. This helps make the classroom feel like their own.
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The Big Brainstorming List of Procedures and Setting Up Classroom Routines
Book Talks/Read Aloud
Especially in the first two weeks of school, but really throughout the whole year, the greatest use of an extra few minutes is the book talk.
The heart of any classroom is the book talk.
If we want kids to want to read and appreciate books, we have to look at our own reading habits and the time that we dedicate toward the advocacy of reading. A book talk can be as little as 5 minutes. You can run through why the book is a great read, pull up a book trailer on YouTube (there are thousands), and read through a line or two. Book talks are also a great way to get to know your new students.
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Get Kids Writing Right Away
There are two types of back-to-school writing that don’t involve filling out surveys or doing pre-assessments: Narrative Writing and Close-Reading Skills. I love doing Where I’m From poems and I Am poems first with kids because it helps me get to know them right away. I also have been interested in trying to do sensory writing with kids as a way to tap into who they are through the five senses. If narrative writing is something you are wanting to wait a little bit for, a great starting activity is reviewing close-reading skills like annotation. Annotation is always the first skill that I would teach each year because it helps them see that reading is more than a passive activity. Activity reading encourages involved learners.
Example Activity: Classroom Pen Pals
Mentor Text: Dear Unicorn by Josh Funk and Charles Santoso
Dear Unicorn by Josh Funk and Charles Santoso is a cute mentor text that includes entries between Nicole and Constance Nace-Ayre (Connie). Students will love this one because kids are writing letters to unicorns. Each entry has an example question prompt that can guide students to find out more about each other.
Classroom pen pals are a great idea for building classroom community and having students write to each other. There are a variety of ways to organize a pen pal project. As a former sixth-grade teacher, I always wanted to team up with an elementary teacher so that my students could write to their elementary school pen pals about what middle school was like and their first impressions. You could also complete this project within your own classroom. Students can have a partner, and they can write letters to introduce themselves, their interests, drawings, or as the mentor text would say “You never know where words and pictures might take you.”
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Build Classroom Community with Where I'm From Poems and I Am Poems
Engaging the Senses: 10 Sensory Writing Activities for the English Language Arts Classroom
Why the First Skill I Teach is Annotation
Pre-Tests/Curriculum Needs
This is the least fun of all of the checkpoint items for back-to-school; however, it will definitely come up. While pre-tests can take the fun out of getting to know your new kids, you can also complete some activities with them that make it fun.
Testing ideas to consider:
Bring in some gum to help with concentration (Depending on personal preference)
Coloring sheets available when done (Have them help you decorate a wall or two)
Give active breaks to kids that are going to struggle with being quiet for lengthy periods of time
Figure out your strategy-Some teachers want to do a little bit each day and others want to do whole class periods to get it out of the way. Do what works for you. At the beginning of the year, I would argue it’s more important to get back to the fun stuff so you can jump into content sooner.