5 Fun Ideas for Back to School

For everyone else, like myself, who feels like they have forgotten how to be a teacher over the summer holidays, I have some ideas for activities for the first day back in the classroom. Leave a comment below telling me your go to activity for the first day back!

1. Lego Challenge

The first thing I like to do on the first day of school is to set a lego challege. Children are challenged on the first day to make anything creative with lego. They can work in pairs, with other children at their table group or individually. For those students who don’t know what to make, there are prompt cards placed at each table. You can find my prompt cards that you see in the picture here.

This time while they are creating, allows me to spend time chatting to each of the groups and getting to know them. It gives the class the time to chat together too and catch up on each others summer holidays. It also means that as students are arriving into school, I don’t have to keep stopping a lesson or activity to explain to them what we are doing. On top of this I get to use the time to teach one of the first procedures: ‘One, two, three, eyes on me! One, two, eyes on you!’ This is one of the callbacks that I use with my class to get their attention. At first I just get the students to repeat ‘One, two, eyes on you!’ when I have said ‘One, two, three, eyes on me!’ After awhile I tell them that the next time they need to make sure they stop what they’re doing and look at me when repeating the line. Next I get them to stop what they are doing, drop what is in their hands, turn to look at me and repeat the line and freeze. Finally I mess around with different voices while saying it, and getting them to call back the line in whatever voice I did first.

I use a timer from ClassDojo and show it on the interactive board so that the kids can see what time they have left. If you haven’t used ClassDojo before, now is the time to look into it. I use several of the features on it including the timer, group maker, music and big ideas. After 40 minutes, children are asked to show what it was they created. They then break up their creations back into the lego box. A good tip to stop the complaining about having to break up their pieces is to allow them to take a picture of their creation first. Tell them that they will be uploaded to their portfolios on ClassDojo and they can see them again.

2. Rainbow Get to Know Me Activity

This activity does take a little bit of prep before the first day back but it is a lovely way for you to get to know the children in your class and is a beautiful colourful display for the start of the year. It is available to download here. Prior to giving each student what they need, I would use it as an opportunity to review using a glue stick and scissors. Again with those first few days and weeks, teaching routines and procedures is so important in the classroom. The children need to know what your expectations are from the beginning, otherwise you will find yourself with broken glue sticks and random lids or lidless glue sticks every time there is a similar activity. Teach children how to use and look after the materials in your classroom, even if you think they already know, there will always be one who doesn’t and it will save you replacing materials throughout the year.

This rainbow cloud is available in English or as Gaeilge. Personally I would use the English version in the junior and middle classes but use the Irish version in the senior classes as an introductory Gaeilge lesson to review vocabulary and conversation. In both versions there are 6 sentences to be completed, the child’s age, class, who they live with, what their favourite subject is, what their favourite thing to do is and what they want to be when they are older. This simple activity will give you lots of information on the first day about your students and immediately you will be able to start building a relationship with them and differentiating your lessons to work to their interests.

3. Class Family Word search

My students last year absolutely loved a word search and even better again, this one contains their name and the name of their classmates. I’ve also included my name (Maureen, see if you can find it) and the SNA’s name who will be working with me. This provides them with an opportunity to get to know our names and recognise the spellings and to get to know the names and spellings of the other children in their class. I have 3 boys this year with the same name, so one name in my class is repeated 3 times and yes they will have to search for each one because each one, regardless of it being the same letters, is a different child in the class.

I made this word search using the word search generator on education.com . I then copied and pasted it into PowerPoint so that I could add a boarder and make it look a little more child friendly. Education.com also provides an answer guide showing you where all the names are. I would use this for the children to self correct their work after they have finished or by showing it on the interactive board after the activity is finished. I chose to make my word search in 15×15. This allowed for each of my students names without much overlapping. Of course for older classes you could make this as complicated as you wanted to and even make the word search bigger. Younger classes could work in pairs to find the answers.

As well as this being a good first day activity, this word search generator is a good website to have for creating your own word searches around any topics you are teaching or in older classes, getting them to create their own word searches showing what they learned about a particular topic. They could swap with classmates and it is a good way to review new vocabulary or important words related to that particular topic. Rather than giving a word that students had to find, you could also give a clue to the answer, for example this is the smallest county in Ireland. They would then write the answer and then look for the word in the word search.

4. The Pigeon Has To Go To School Read Aloud & Activity

The Pigeon Has To Go To School (Affiliate Link) is a fantastically funny read aloud about the Pigeon’s expectations and worries about going to school. I use this on the first day with a new class to open a discussion about how they feel about being back in school or starting school, what worries they might have and to answer questions about how our class and school day will run. This book would work well with junior to middle classes. I use it with second and they always get a laugh out of it. It also allows us to start some book talk on the first day, talking about title, illustrations, author, illustrator and blurb. After reading the book and talking for a bit about students worries and questions about the new school year, we do a small survey about first day feelings.

5. Name Mindful Colouring

For a moment of calm in the madness of the first day back, check out these beautiful mindful colouring pages here from twinkl. Each page can be edited to include the names of the students in your classroom. These worksheets will become the cover of my students wellbeing copies and they can return to them whenever they are finished work early or we are having some mindful time in the classroom.