The start of a new school year can be an exciting yet scary time for students. Students are anxious to see who will be in their class, catch up with friends, and learn their schedule. Creating a happy and relaxing classroom culture during the first week will help relieve students’ back-to-school anxiety and set a comfortable environment for the rest of the year. Help ease your class into the new school year with these six first-week-of-school activities.
Start the year off with a sweet treat for your class. At the beginning of the day, welcome students with some sugar and a sweet message. Who doesn’t love sweets first thing in the morning? Of course, make sure candies are wrapped properly, allergen-free, and are allowed by your school.
This great icebreaker activity will surely have you and your students laughing by the end. It allows your students to learn more about you - but with a twist. Have them complete a quick worksheet that you have created, where students might have to fill in how old they think you are, what your favorite food is, or if you have any children or pets - there is much room for creativity. Then as a class, review the answers. As a former teacher, I always loved the answers I got for how old my students thought I was.
During the first week, you can have students pick a scrapbook page. Then students can take that page home to decorate it with pictures, paint, etc. so that it paints a picture of who they are and what they like to do. You can then have students present their scrapbook page, which helps students learn more about each other. The scrapbook pages are also a great project to display in your classroom at the beginning of the year.
At the beginning of each year, especially for students in a new building, doing a scavenger hunt, even if it is just in your classroom, can be a great way to help students feel comfortable in their new environment and ease those first-day jitters.
Making new friends can be intimidating for many shy students. Help your class get to know one another by making time for icebreakers. Conversation Jenga is a great way for students to get to know their classmates. Tape different conversation topics or suggestions on each tile, create random playing groups, and have students share the question and answer from the tile they pulled. By writing your questions on tape, you can reuse the Jenga tiles throughout the year for study sessions and quizzes.
Get to know your new students by doing an activity involving everyone. Ask the class to complete a task. You can start simple: ask your students to form a line from shortest to tallest without talking. Then once they have successfully completed that, you can give them more difficult tasks, such as forming a line from youngest to oldest.
Updated July 19, 2023, by Courtney Udanis, Eduplanet21