First day of school – photo via Flickr
The first day of school will be here before we know it. Breaking the ice with new students can be a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be! We know that our readers are some of the smartest and most creative connected educators around. So we’re posing this question:
What is your favorite first day of school activity?
- How do you break the ice, get your students to warm up to one another, and establish rapport?
- Is it important for you to get to know your students’ learning styles on the first day?
- What activities have you tried that worked particularly well for you? Did you create a time capsule? Go on a scavenger hunt? Have the students draw a picture of themselves? Start them out right away with getting connected and turning your classroom into a blended learning environment?
- Tell us a story about what you did, and why you think it worked.
Post a comment with your favorite first day of school activity. We’ll post the results here in a few days (giving you credit, of course), and may select your activity to publish in a free eBook we’re building about the first day of school!
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Sheryl is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Powerful Learning Practice. She works with schools and districts from around the world helping them to infuse technology into their curriculums and by leading other digital conversion efforts.
Sheryl also consults with governments, educational organizations and non-profits in development of their various professional learning initiatives.
Sheryl is a sought-after presenter at national and international events, speaking on topics related to digital and online learning, teacher and educational leadership, online community building, and other educational issues impacting children of poverty.
Sheryl served on the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Board of Directors for six years. She co-authored The Connected Educator: Learning and Leading in a Digital Age with Lani Ritter Hall. Sheryl has four children and four grandsons, Luke, Logan, Levi and Tanner and a trio of dachshunds. You can find out more on her blog and on Twitter @snbeach.
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Stand Up, Sit Down!
1. If you have a dog, stand up.
2. If someone other than you took the dog out to the bathroom this morning, sit down.
3. If you have a cat, stand up.
4. If someone, other than you, fed the dog or cat sit down.
5. If you are an only child, stand up.
6. If you are the youngest child in the family, sit down.
7. If you are going to take a trip this coming Labor Day weekend, stand up.
8. If you stayed up, past 11:00 last night, sit down.
9. If you have received an A on an assignment during these past eight days of school, stand up.
10. If you did not eat a good healthy breakfast….lots of milk product, cereal, fiber and fruits, sit down!
11. If you helped a neighbor this summer, stand up.
12. If you received a kiss or a hug, this morning from someone, sit down.
Directions: Stand if the item applies to you. Keep standing through the next item, unless it directs you to sit down. Hopefully, you will have many students standing when you get to #12. Very few will sit down on #12! Give these students a candy kiss or hug and say, “Everyone deserves a kiss (hug)!” — This leads to further discussions about pets, helping others, healthy eating and habits, traveling, etc. after the activity.
Awesome, this is a really cool activity. I am so cheating it! 😀
Marble Maze: Small group challenge
Using only the materials provided (empty cereal/kleenex/duotang boxes, 3 large index cards, 1 empty toilet roll tube, pair scissors/person, 1.5 metre masking tape, and 1 marble, construct a maze so that your marble drops from a minimum height of 30 cm (12 inches) to the ground/surface in the longest amount of time possible. Minimum time must be greater than 3 seconds.
Consider this stolen! Love it!
What is the time limit?
..actually meant to ask if this can be accomplished in one class period.
Love this idea! Adding it to my plan for the first day.
Thanks for reading! Borrow away! 🙂 mj
I say get kids excited about being connected learners right away 🙂 I would do two activities to get them excited about the possibilities:
1. Introduce Skype and share the intro to “Skype in the Classroom” video with students
http://vimeo.com/44867804
2. During the first day of school, have students add a tweet to the class account & share what they are most excited to learn or desire to learn this upcoming year
-Encourage parents and other educators to send tweets back to the class throughout the day
I’m going to do a “quiz”titled Mrs. Ratzel by the Numbers. So students will have to see how well they know me…and learn about me through my 9 or 10 questions. I wrote about this on my blog http://teachingtechie.typepad.com/learning/2012/08/first-week-of-school-anything-but-boring.html
Then we’ll turn it around and I’ll ask them to write _____ by the Numbers where they tell me the most important 5 numbers in their life and why.
Since I wrote the post, I’ve had several comments and Tweets which have led me to figure out a couple more things to make this even better. I can use their _______ by the Numbers as a dry-run for blogging on Edmodo. Other students can read and comment(with a post-it). This way we’ll get a chance to talk about high quality commenting and doing some paper blogging. Also when we’re done with that, I can use all of these for my bulletin board.
With 140+ ________by the Numbers, every student will have something up in the room that represents them and I can continue to look at those to get to know them better and better. Plus I think they’ll like that it’s their faces they see.
I do a cooperative artwork project. I give each group of about 4 or 5 kids a huge circle shaped piece of paper (cut out of the big white mural paper).
1. They have to divide the circle using different kinds of line but the parts must all be connected somehow and have balance. The parts must all be bigger than their hand.
2. They then paint (tempera) in the shapes keeping in mind that the painting needs balance of colour and they have to work together to get that done-move around the circle.
3. Once the tempera is dry they take black acrylic paint and outline the spaces in the circle.
4. They come up with a group name for their paintings and a good reason for the name.
5. As a group they present their painting, discuss what worked well and what they like most about the painting and the process.
**these paintings easily cover two bulletin boards and are very impressive for fall open houses!
Hi, Michelle,
Thank you for sharing the cooperative artwork project. What a wonderful way for children to get acquainted, work together, and create paintings enjoyed by all.
Kathy,
You are most welcome. I teach through art a lot. I have a whole unit around the book “the Dot” if you are interested. 🙂
I give each student their own container of play dough. They sculpt whatever they wish, and then I have them write about and illustrate their creation, They then give their creation to their neighbor, who will blog about their partner’s creation. Of course, the original artist responds to the post where the. buddy digitally described their creation on the blug.
This year, I’m going to have students create a Voki with facts about themselves they would like to share. We’ll project them on my whiteboard and try to guess who is who!
This gives even my shy students a chance to create something and share without feeling all eyes are on them. It also gives us a chance to do something fun with our netbooks, and will lead into my chat about using them in the classroom. 🙂
This year, I’m planning to start off with the cooperative seating activity discussed in the blog by Sandy Merz. http://bit.ly/Nzdj3J Once students are seated, they’ll write me a letter about their hopes and dreams, favorite/hated books, and past learning experiences. Then, I’ll work in a bit of character education and have them express themselves via bulletin board graffiti. They’ll answer how they want to be treated by others, how they want to treat others, and how they want to resolve conflicts. We’ll use this info. as a springboard for classroom rules. Plus, it puts student work on display for back-to-school night.
These activities will allow students to work collaboratively, offer personal expression, and demonstrate to me how they’ll function in the class.
Hi, i think starting a day with learning something new, might interest students. Learning with the help of technology, will be of great help for students. To assign projects on the subjects which students like the most. I would also like my students to talk about how they spent their vacations, talk about their personal experiences, if they have been out for a trip during vacations.