If you are looking for some simple and printable back to school activities for your primary class, then look no further! Keep on reading to learn about my top four printable activities for the new school year!
This quick first day of school activity requires teachers to print, staple, and start. Two sheets of paper required for each student (e.g., print back-to-back on two sheets of paper, and then staple).
The Get to Know Me!worksheets are simple and fun to use as a Back to School activity.
These pages are geared for Kindergarten to Grade 1 students. Students can use these pages to introduce themselves to fellow classmates and have fun learning about their new friends, too.
The pages can be used individually or compiled as a booklet.
During the first few weeks of school, one of the main things I aim to do is help my students learn each other’s names. In order for me to do this, I use a few different types of activities to help them celebrate our names. I also enjoy using some picture books to share the important message that our names are special and that we can show respect and care to others when we learn to say their names correctly.
Why Is This Important?
As teachers, we can help our students develop a positive view of themselves and others. We can help students learn that their names makes them special. We can help them learn to genuinely appreciate the names of other people, too.
Many years ago, I remember reading a new student’s name on the first day of school. I pronounced it as I saw it on the paper and naturally, students started calling her in the same way, too. Going forward, whenever we played name games, this student would pronounce her way in the same way as I had introduced her.
For months, I wondered why this student would often not respond when I called her name during the day. It wasn’t until the latter part of the school year, when this student very kindly and bravely said: “Why are you saying my name like that? That’s not my name. It’s _____________.” My mouth dropped open. I felt absolutely horrible! For such a long time, I mispronounced her name, her beautiful name! No wonder she didn’t respond. She didn’t recognize it as her name because it wasn’t how her name was pronounced! I immediately re-introduced her to the class and apologized for my great mistake.
I share this story because I have been on both sides of the fence when it comes to names! I have obviously, as outlined above, unfortunately mispronounced a student’s amazing name. I have also had my name mispronounced as well, even up to today as a grown-up!
It’s important for us to take the necessary time to listen carefully and learn how to pronounce the names of our students. It is equally as important to give our students the opportunity to practice saying the names of their peers. It’s also valuable to let each student know that it’s more than okay to politely correct others, whether it’s a fellow student or teacher, if their name is mispronounced. Yes, it may sometimes take some practice, but it’s extremely important. It shows respect and care.
Some Name Activities I Use in Class
Shout It Out: We go outdoors and stand in a circle. Each student says their name loudly and we say it back. This usually gets the students smiling when they hear the echo of their name. It’s a great way to practice pronouncing our names.
Name Tags: Students can wear their names (e.g., using stickers) in order to help others learn to read and say their names.
Popsicle Stick Names: In between lessons, I like to use these popsicle sticks to help students read and say the names they see. It’s a great way to celebrate our names.
Name Art: There are so many amazing ways to celebrate our names in the form of art! Students enjoy using markers, crayons, or pencil crayons, to design their name in different ways. In fact, this year, I have decided that we will do 2 – 3 variations of name art.
Guess Who: Using a student’s name, I create a riddle and give clues to the class to figure out the “mystery student”. Clues such as, “This student has 7 letters in their name. It starts with a letter a and ends with a y, etc.” Students love solving mysteries and so this game works well. They all wait for their turn to be the “mystery student” over the first month.
Name Discussion: Ask your students, “Why are names important? How do they help us? Why are they special?” Also ask them, “How do you feel when your name is said incorrectly? How do you help others learn your name? How do you feel when your name is pronounced the right way?”
Favourite Books to Celebrate Our Names
Here are my Top 3 favourite books that help me focus on the fact that names are special and important. Click on each book below for more details about the storyline!
Here are five of my favourite items for teachers in the primary grades. These have been most helpful to me while teaching during the pandemic. *non-affiliate / unsponsored links*
1. Head Bands with Buttons
September 2020 was the first time we wore masks to school while teaching in person. After the first week, I surely noticed some discomfort midway through the day. The straps of the masks would pull on my ears and made them slightly sore. I soon found these awesome headbands and they have surely helped me feel a bit more comfortable! Click on the image above for more details.
2. Teacher Apron
I found this amazing teacher apron in the Etsy Shop called, Hot Touch! (unsponsored / non-affiliate link)
I ordered it last Fall for school because I wanted something that could hold a sanitizer bottle, pens, my keys, etc. Not only is it nice in appearance, it’s also super functional. The half-apron has three pockets and an adjustable waist band. This vendor even personalizes it with your name if you choose to do so! It’s an item I never knew I needed and now I can’t do without it!
Take a look at some of my other personal favourites for teachers!
3. Chime
Teachers need to get the attention of their students throughout the day. One item that I just ordered and can’t wait to start using this year is a chime. The gentle tones of this beautiful instrument will help me calmly redirect their attention when needed.
The chime I ordered is from an Etsy Shop called Gifts of Natura(unsponsored / non-affiliate link). It should arrive before the end of my first week at school. Another chime that caught my attention is by TreeWorks Chimes. Check it out below!
4. Portable Lunch Warmer
Now this one was a game-changer for me! I never knew I’d love the Crock-Pot Lunch Warmer as much as I do!
I wanted to eat homemade meals for lunch more often. I also wanted to warm up my food without using a microwave. Enter this amazing item that is perfect for busy teachers! It looks small, yet holds a whole lot! It has a plug that neatly wraps around the bottom of the warmer for easy storage.
The night before school, I put my leftover food (or meal of choice) into the stainless steel container and then place it in the fridge. In the morning, I take the container out of the fridge and put it into the portable warmer (not yet plugged). The warmer goes into my lunch bag and heads to work with me. Depending on the amount, food warms up on low heat between 15 – 30 minutes.
Some favourite foods that I have tried in my warmer? Lasagna. Mac and Cheese with a side of broccoli and chicken. Ministrone soup. Veggie Noodles. The list goes on.
I have been trying to intentionally drink more water during the day. This beautiful stainless steel water bottle helps me to do so. I especially love the fact that it is BPA free and keeps my water cool. Many beautiful designs are available, but this one caught my eye at first glance. Take a peek at this S’well Stainless Steel Water Bottle.
How About You?
What are some items that you find useful as a teacher? Do you have any particular favourites?
Let’s prepare for the new school year with some back to school tips! Whether you teach a primary or junior grade, the first few weeks of school are vital in creating a presence and the tempo of your classroom.
Back to School: Ready Or Not…It’s Here!
How have you spent your summer break? Hopefully, it’s been one that included some downtime and rest. Some fun and relaxation. Why? Simply because it was needed. The summer break has been super necessary after the year we’ve had in teaching. I sincerely hope you had some days to rest and rejuvenate in ways that are special for you.
Despite it being summer though, the reality is that it’s time to prepare for back to school. Where I live, we go back to school in early September. Now that it is August, planning for the new school year is definitely on my mind.
Back to School: The Early Years of Teaching
As a new teacher, I focused on back to school preparations in a different way. I spent time planning for teaching, assessing, and evaluation, but spent a whole lot of time physically preparing my classroom. I remember dedicating so much time making sure my bulletin boards, decor, and other visuals were “just right”.
Today I still see this is an important part of getting ready to go back to school. In fact, it’s exciting and fun to include this in the process! After experiencing many first days of school however, I have realized a few key areas that truly benefit my class and my teaching overall each year.
Back to School Tips
In this post, I’m going to share six back to school tips that I look forward to following again as I prepare for my new class. Perhaps they may be helpful for you, too!
Back to School Tip #1: Plan Your Year
This is key to having a successful school year! Back to school preparations for me starts with drafting an outline of my school year. Even though we already know that plans may change as we get to know our students’ needs and interests, it’s still important to have a map of where we are going in our learning.
The last year has especially demanded change in our teaching due to the pandemic. For that reason, I will be planning my year with the most useful aspects of my in-person and distance learning experiences.
This is What I do When Planning My Year
1. Plan my Year-at-a-Glance: I write down the topics in each subject that I need to cover. I then break down the topics by term and/or month. To organize my year, I use a simple digital teacher planner that I created. I like using it because I can easily make changes as needed. For more details, you can read about it here.
2. Focus on curriculum expectations or standards: I look through the curriculum documents. The expectations helps me plan my units in more detail.
3. Outline Unit Plans for Each Subject for the Year: This is where I use my curriculum expectations to focus on what I will cover in each subject. This process also helps me think about lessons, key strategies, assessments, and activities that will drive my teaching.
4. Reporting Statements: Yes, I know it’s only back to school time, yet part of preparing me for a successful year includes this task. Planning with the end in mind helps me stay organized. It also guides my assessments and lowers stress levels (slightly) when it’s time to write report cards.
5. Brainstorm Activities for the First Weeks of School: Time to think about getting to know my new students! It’s best to think about ways to help each new class start their year in a great way! I use the first few weeks of school to strictly get to know my students and learn about what they know and need to know.
Before going onto the next tip, I just have to mention that my planning doesn’t stop at the above! Once I assess the needs of my students, I start breaking down my plans for the term even further: I start using a digital Week-at-a-Glance planner. This helps me organize my subjects by week. I change it as needed as I work with my class and learn more about their needs and interests.
Back to School Tip #2: Prepare Your Classroom
As mentioned earlier, this was perhaps my favourite part of back to school preparations in my early days of teaching! It’s so much fun to set up the physical classroom. Setting up your classroom as an inviting space is a great way to make a new class feel welcomed and engaged. Putting lots of thought into the physical set-up of the classroom can also help maximize learning experiences and opportunities, too.
Quick lesson from my experience: My classroom used to be set-up (e.g., bulletin boards, visuals around the classroom) to my liking each year. I enjoyed seeing how it came together…until one year, I couldn’t do the same. Due to a late arrival from a summer trip, I had only one day to set-up the classroom, compared to a full week or more I had in the past. That year, my students came into a more plain classroom (bare bulletin boards!), but you know what? It was the best classroom set-up ever! My students and I enjoyed decorating our space together. It was a complete mindset shift and one that I continue to follow each year since that time. The blank canvas approach has been a winning approach for me and one that I honestly didn’t think would work at the onset!
My students enjoyed decorating and setting up our space together. It was a complete mindset shift and one that I continue to do each year since that time.
Now that distance learning is something we are familiar with, I plan on setting up my Virtual Classroom spaces as well (e.g., Google Classroom, Seesaw, class website, Zoom meetings, etc.) This is a fairly new variable in our teaching and so I think it’s important for me to reflect on what worked well (and what didn’t) last year while teaching online.
Back to School Tip #3: Welcome Your Students
Okay, it’s the first day of school and it’s time to welcome your new students! I can feel the excitement and nerves in the children, families, and teachers already! Here are a few quick ways that I like to welcome students back to school during that first week:
“I’m happy you’re here!” Letting my students know that I’m thrilled to have them in my class helps ease some nerves for students and families. The truth is, I’m thrilled to get to work with them! I also like to let them know that I feel nervous, too.
Name Games and Activities: Since teachers and students alike are learning many new names, games and activities are one of my favourite ways to start off the new school year. Celebrating students’ names helps them feel valued and helps to build a classroom community. Invite students to say their names aloud several times (during the first few weeks) so that teachers and peers can learn to respectfully say each others’ names. One of the sweetest things a person can hear is their name as it was intended to sound. Young students can also work on writing their own name in different ways. I even have a challenge after the first two weeks of school! My students line up, while one of their peers (who wishes to participate) tries to name all (or as many) of their new classmates. If they get to a person and can’t recall the name, they simply whisper, “What’s your name again?” and the person replies, then the game continues.
Great Back to School Read Aloud: A Letter From Your teacher: On the First Day of School (By Shannon Olsen) *non-affiliate / unsponsored link*
Back to School Tip #4: Create a Classroom Community
Teachers and students spend a lot of time together each school day. For this reason, it’s critical that I create a classroom community where students feel safe, happy, and open to learning and growing.
While students are learning each other’s names during the early days and weeks of school, it’s also fun to learn more about each other! Doing class surveys and small-group and paired activities give room for students to learn more about the peers they will be working with each day.
Student voice is very important in all that we do. When students take responsibility for caring for their peers and classroom, it makes them feel important and helpful to others (e.g., Line Leader, Pencil Manager, etc.)
Building community can also happen when students have opportunities to share pieces about their lives with the class. Intentionally giving students time to talk with their peers often during the day helps the learning process and is a necessary building block for strengthening reading and writing skills!
Intentionally giving students time to talk with their peers often during the day helps the learning process and is a necessary building block for strengthening reading and writing skills!
Back to School Tip #5: Act Out Routines
Teaching routines may seem mundane at times, but they are a necessary back to school feature. Once my students know what to do, when to do it, and why it’s being done, then my classroom has a better chance of running more smoothly.
I give my students opportunities to act out the routines we are learning. Children learn so much through play and so when they are all given the chance to practice the behaviours we hope to see, they understand the expectations even better.
Some of the routines that I make sure we act out are:
Lining up outside of and entering the school, classroom, etc.
How to organize your desk
What to do after entering the classroom in the morning, after lunch, etc.
How to ask questions or share answers during large group discussions
It is important for me as a teacher to also create that classroom community feeling with each student’s family. Greeting parents before or after school is just a nice start. At the end of the first week of school, I send a general “sunshine note” to each student’s family. Parents enjoy receiving positive messages about their children’s progress in class. I have had great experiences reaching out to parents throughout the year in order to share some good news about their child in class.
By the end of that first week, it is also my goal to have the email addresses and/or phone numbers from parents so that I can update them whenever necessary.
Last year was the first time I set up a class website because it was easy for parents to see quick updates from our class on a whole. It is something I will incorporate again this year.
Time To Start!
Back to School time is always a super busy one. Using these six tips can help you to be ready for this year’s start. Here’s a quick recap of the six tips to help you prepare for back to school:
Plan Your Year
Prepare Your Classroom
Welcome Your Students
Create a Classroom Community
Act Out Routines
Connect with Families
I’m looking forward to planning out my year and meeting my new class. I wish you all the best in your upcoming school year. May it be a fulfilling one for you, your students, and their families!
A digital teacher planner can help you prepare an overview for this school year. This can help you stay organized from the very first day. Planning for your school year can often feel overwhelming, yet the process doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s almost time for “Back to School”, so let’s talk about ways to start organizing our year in some simple and easy ways.
How do I get organized when I’m already so overwhelmed? I don’t know where to start!
If this sounds like you, then keep reading! Using a digital teacher planner may be just the thing for you!
Teacher Planning: My Early Years
As a first-year teacher, I was so excited to start working with my class. Everything needed to be perfect…my bulletin boards, the labels on materials, the classroom library, and more. Setting up a classroom is a large task as it is, yet I enjoyed paying attention to every detail. It all looked great and made me feel proud of the learning environment my students would call their classroom. When it came to preparing for what I needed to teach, that was another story.
While completing my B. Ed program, my fellow teacher candidates and I thought that we were preparing to take on the teaching world! Of course, we were also told that the real learning would begin once we were in a classroom outside of that learning experience.
What I’ve Tried…
Physically writing out plans in a bound, paper Teacher Planner booklet. The problem with this was that if I made errors (or needed more room), I couldn’t make the necessary adjustments.
2. Physically writing out my plans on printed templates that I purchased. The loose paper templates were helpful to add to a binder and move as needed, but sometimes the templates did not serve my needs in planning.
Here are some traditional teacher planners that are useful for those who may prefer writing their plans:
Either approach got the job done, yet it took a long time and was often difficult to find certain key information quickly.
I soon decided that my planning had to be done on the computer, and that helped tremendously.
Fast Forward to the age of awesome online resources that are available for use and easily accessible on all devices.
Here’s a Simple Solution for You!
I’m going to share some of my simple planning templates that help me to organize my school year. These are digital teacher planner templates. I hope they may be helpful to you, too!
These templates can be of great help to you because they are…
already made and ready for use
editable (e.g., topics, subjects, etc.)
easy to store and access online whenever needed
simplistic (e.g., minimalist style)
environmentally-friendly (if kept online and not printed)
printable if needed
I’m going to give descriptions of the templates available in my resource and share some tips for use. There are a variety of them to help you plan and organize your year. Choose the ones that are most suitable and use as needed.
Digital Teacher Planner: Template Breakdown
1. Year-at-a-Glance: Simple
This planner is broken down by term (e.g., September – November, December – February, etc.) On the left side of the template are the spaces for each subject. I like this planner because I can organize my big ideas or goals for each subject by term. It helps me to see where I am going next in my teaching. The template is essentially 2 – 3 pages long by the time I make my plans by subject for each term.
2. Year-at-a-Glance: Detailed
This planning template has one page for every subject. Like the previous template mentioned, it is broken down by term. Let’s say I was working on my plans for Reading using this template. The following criteria would be on the left side of the template:
Key Topics / Focus Areas
Curriculum Expectations / Standards
Activities / Tasks
Assessments
Resources
Since these templates are editable, it doesn’t have to stay on only one page. Adjust as needed. One way I have kept it to the page is by decreasing the size of the font once plans are completed.
3. Year-at-a-Glance: By Subject, By Month
Some years, I have tried planning by month. For that reason, this template was most helpful to me. There is one page for each subject (e.g., Math). On the left side of the template are the months of the school year. Remember this is editable, so if your school year months don’t match what is on the template, it can be changed to suit your needs. I like using this template to do different things:
Plan out themes for Reading each month
Plan out the assessments I wish to conduct each month
Blog Post!Perseverance: What a Roller Coaster! Teaching In A Pandemic
4. Weekly Planner
This planner is one that I use once I have completed a Year-at-a-Glance template. I use the content and ideas from the Year-at-a-Glance and spread them out accordingly by week. This gives me space to break down my plans in smaller chunks.
5. Week-at-a-Glance (One Page)
This template has been a lifesaver for me! I am able to put all of my key lesson topics or activities and routines on one page. This is a great way to summarize the week. I have done one of these each week of this year. It also served as part of my emergency plans if a substitute teacher was needed on a particular day.
6. Day Plan Template
Up until the start of school closures due to the Pandemic in March 2020, I typed out my daily plans on this template, printed a copy (several days at a time), and left them on my desk. During the pandemic, the use of the template changed because I started using lesson slides / a slide deck as my day plans (more on that in another blog post!) I wanted to include this classic-type template nonetheless because I know it’s something that may still be of use at some time or another.
Summary
Planning for your school year takes a lot of thought, process, and work. Nevertheless, it doesn’t have to be complicated. Using templates like the ones described in this blog post can help you save time, keep them in one place, edit as needed, etc.
Let the Planning Begin!
The days of summer are quickly passing by, and ready or not, a new school year awaits us. Why not start planning for your year in a simple way right now?
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