1st Day of School Activities

Hi, Teachers. Welcome back to My Adventures in ESL. On today’s show, I’m going to be sharing with you some first day of school activities that you can do with your language learners.

Now, like on every episode, I want to share and celebrate some “wins”.  Before we do that, I would like for you to reflect on your “wins” for the week. What were some “wins” that you are proud of, some that you want to celebrate? Remember, it doesn’t have to be huge. You can be a small win. A win is a win and they start to add up. So if you want to celebrate your “wins”, join our Facebook community, My Adventures in ESL, or you can email me at millie@myadventuresinesl.com.

Now, this week’s “wins” comes from Madison. Madison is a first year teacher in my program, the ESL Teacher Master Plan, and she has been working so hard at setting up her school year for success. Welcome to teaching, Madison. And I know you’re going to have a fantastic first year of teaching this school year. Now, like I mentioned, we are going to be talking about some first day of school activities that you can do with your language learner.

It doesn’t matter if you’re attending in person or hybrid or if you’re strictly virtual. We all need to plan our first day of school activities. This is where you might be getting stuck and overwhelmed because there are so many activities out there it’s just so hard to figure out which ones that you want to do. 

Now, it is easy when planning for the first day of activities because you may simply think, oh, I can print some worksheets “about yourself” and that’s my lesson plan. I’ll just print the worksheets out, give them to the students and they can complete those on the first day of school. Doing this can set the tone of your classroom. And I know you don’t want the tone of our classroom to be habitual worksheet printers. We want to be giving our lessons, engagement and being thoughtful about what we’re planning. I was this person when I first started teaching. I would just print tons of worksheets on the first day of school and think that was my first day of  my lesson. I even did my second and my third year, the same. I was like, I would just print a lot of worksheets, fun little activities for the students to do, and that’s my lesson. I didn’t realize that this was setting the tone in my classroom with my students. I knew that there were just so many activities, I wanted to print and I wanted to do them all. I wasn’t being intentional about my first day or week of school activities, and I wasn’t setting the right tone with my students.

I knew this was a problem when I was going on the fourth day of school and I was doing the “getting to know you” activities and the students were getting really restless. They were like, oh, another one.

Then on top of that, in the middle of the fourth day, I ran out of the “Getting to Know You” worksheets. I was stuck. I was confused. I was lost. I was like, oh, my goodness, what did I do? I thought I had printed out enough activities. Then that was a feeling I didn’t like and I knew that I had to take some action. I knew this had to be fixed and I knew I had to fix it immediately.

I had gotten into a bad habit that first week of school of just printing out those worksheets thinking  oh, the students can just do this the first week of school and not really planning intentional lessons for my first week of school. On the first day activity, what I did for this upcoming school year, because I kept in mind what happened previously, I had to make sure I was very intentional about my first day of school activities with my students.

One thing I decided to include in classroom procedures was to have the students practice coming into the classroom. This school year, since we’re doing virtual- learning the first part, I’m actually going to have the students practice coming into the classroom during virtual learning. So they can go out and come in. And those are things that I included. I also made an interactive activity where I modeled the correct and incorrect way of entering into the classroom. The students then provided me with immediate feedback. So I started incorporating these procedures and teaching those at the beginning of the school year during the first week. I also decided that building relationships with my students, is going to be an ongoing process and that I shouldn’t feel the need to cram all of that into the first day of school or even the first week of school.

So on my first day, I decided to include a “Getting to Know Me” section, and this time I completed the section as well. Before, I didn’t complete the activities but this time I completed the activities with the students.  And like before when  I would just print them out and give them to the students, this time I wanted to complete them and introduced myself to the students. I shared things about myself like my goals and things that I want to do with them in the classroom.

And it was also a great opportunity to model for the students how the “about myself” activity should look like. I work with an amazing science teacher, shout-out to Ms. Rickman, and she really inspired me this school year to do a virtual locker. In the locker, you’re going to include all of your favorite things that your students can click on to learn more about you. In my virtual locker, I am thinking of doing a picture show, my favorite movie, a vision board of my goals and wishes, so they can have a really deep understanding of who I am as a person.

This will show the kids the personal side of me and really that is the secret to building relationships. So be thinking about those activities that you’re doing and being intentional the first week of school. What I would like you to do is on the first day is think about what you would like to accomplish and sort that out in your lesson plan. I would also encourage you to include some activities where you’re introducing your procedures to the classroom. And if you are going to print out activities where students are doing an “about them” or “about myself” activity, you should also do the activity and model how you will like the activity completed and introduce yourself to the students.

And remember, you’re going to be relationship-building throughout the school year. Don’t feel the need or don’t feel pressure to print tons of worksheets and cram those relationship building activities on the first day of school. You’re going to have plenty of time to do that throughout the school year. So here are your next steps. I want to encourage you to create your first day of school lesson plan that includes simple procedures and about myself activity and remember, you need to complete that activity as well and show the students how you want it to look and also so the students can learn more about you as a teacher.

Remember, model, model, model!!! Model the behavior that you want the students to use in the classroom.