Heading back to school is both exciting and a little nerve-wracking for both students and teachers, so here are some ways to get off to a great start, by quickly building relationships between your students, and between you and your students.
Mingling Activities
I love mingling games and so do students. They quickly add energy to the class and everyone relaxes while they play the game.
Here are few great mingling activities to try:
Find Someone Who...
Each child has a worksheet and pencil and roams around the class asking and answering questions. Children choose any question on their sheet, approach a child to ask, and record their response. If the second child can't answer that question, the first child may ask another question, until they find one that the child can answer.
Children continue until their sheets are complete. Then, come back together as a group and children can either share interesting facts with a partner or with the whole class.
All About Me Bar Graphs
Doing class surveys are another great mingling activity. With this "All About Me Graphing Fun" pack children choose one of the topics on the bar graphs to go and ask their classmates. Children create a tally chart first and then make a bar graph showing the class responses. There are lots of fun topics and children love sharing their preferences, so this activity is ideal for fostering relationships and covering math skills at the same time.
Make a Fortune Teller
Fortune tellers are hands-on and as soon as children have made them, they'll be keen to try them out on others. With questions designed to get to know others, this kind of activity is great for mingling.
Drawing, Writing, and Designing Activities
All About Me Doodle Pages
After an energetic activity, an activity that gets children working is a great way to calm down a little. An "All About Me" page for the wall is always a winner for creating an instant classroom display while also enabling children to express who they are and what makes them unique. Children love to read other students' pages, so these are a great way for you and the other students to learn about who is in their class.
Design a Classroom
Designing their ideal classroom is another great calming activity that will look great as a display. Children love to feel like their ideas matter, and with this activity children get to design a classroom the way they'd like it to be. And who knows - they may have some great ideas that can be carried out!
Choose a Writing Activity
Children love to have a choice, so displaying different writing prompts can be a great motivator for getting back into writing. Some children love poetry, others like story writing, and others love explaining things. So, a variety of writing prompts about summer and the year ahead will ease children into writing about topics that are relevant and fun.
Feedback for the Teacher
It's so valuable to hear directly from our students about what their strengths and areas for improvement are when it comes to learning. A handout that gets children to give you feedback on how they feel about core topics including reading, writing, and math, and anything the child specifically wants you to know, will be so helpful with planning and understanding the children in your class better.
Make a Name Plate or Name Tent
It really helps to learn children's names quickly when they have their names displayed, so this is a great calming activity which gives children a chance to get creative. I love 3D tent-style names because they're so easy to see and fun to make. They also give more space for adding details and pictures so children can display their likes, attributes, and hobbies in a visual way.
If you're after a template to make one of these, you can grab one here.
Getting Back into Math
Having some fun activities for math is essential at the start of the year to quickly foster some positive feelings about math in your classroom. Whether it's class bar graphs like the ones here, a craft to practice fact families like this schoolbag-themed one, or a fun number search to revise times tables, children will enjoy their first math experience with you, which is so important for a great year ahead.
Team Games
After some quieter activities, it's a great idea to add an energizer to the day, and what better way than some friendly team games? Team games bring students together with a common goal - to beat other teams! Games where children race to write lists or try to correctly guess questions about their teacher are sure to bring laughs.
Summing Up
I hope that gives you lots of ideas to try for your new class and helps you to quickly foster a fun and friendly classroom environment.
You can find many of the games and activities in this Back to School Pack.
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