It’s back-to-school time and we know you’re determined to start the year off right. But whether you’re a new or veteran teacher, you still need some time to stop and get back into the back-to-school frame of mind. Armed with these 10 back-to-school tips for teachers, the new school year is bound to be a success no matter what it looks like!

Our Top Back-to-School Tips for Teachers

1. This Year is Not Last Year

Whether your last year of teaching was great or terrible, head into this school year knowing that it will be different. That doesn’t mean that if you had a great year last year, you won’t have a great year this year. It just means you need to look at the year with fresh eyes. You will have different students with different interests and unique personalities. What worked for your students last year may not work this year and ideas that flopped last year may be this year’s biggest successes.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking, “This year will be a breeze. I’ll just use the same lesson plans, same activities and same materials I used last year.” Instead, keep what you did last year as a backup, but go into the school year prepared to start over focused on a new group of students and their individual needs.

2. Get to Know Your Students

It takes time to get to know your students. Plan to spend a lot of time getting to know your students during the first week of school. This involves more than just learning their names. Find out their learning styles, what their interests are, and how they feel about the subject you teach. Create a few short tests or tasks to figure out where students are at so you know where to start the curriculum and to make sure no students are left behind if you’d planned to start much further ahead in the curriculum.

3. Make Students Feel Welcome

As you get to know your students, you should also make them feel welcome in your classroom. If you receive class rosters in advance, welcome students before they even step through your door by sending them a short letter or calling them and letting them know how excited you are to have them in your class. For a smaller class, post students’ names around the room or give students a special gift on the first day of school. Greet every student with a smile and a handshake as they walk in the door and let them know that it is going to be a great year.

4. Communicate with Parents

The beginning of the school year is the perfect time to get parents on your side. You may not have many discipline problems during the first week of school, but you can still make phone calls or send e-mails to parents. During the first two weeks of school, make it a point to contact every student’s parent at least once to share something positive. This will let parents know that you truly care about their children and that not every phone call from the school will be for something bad. Once students get wind that you contact parents for positives, they may be more motivated to behave in the hopes that they get another good phone call home.

5. Set the Tone

The first few days of school are usually a little more relaxed, but they are also important days for teachers to use to set the tone for the rest of the school year. In the midst of ice-breakers and administrative tasks, make sure students are clear about the rules and expectations for your classroom and start following those rules from day one. While you may not want to give homework on the first day, students should also start learning on day one. Plan an activity to introduce students to what you will be teaching and help them understand that learning is the main focus of your classroom.

6. Be Organized

If you are not organized at the beginning of the school year, it will be hard to get organized once the school year begins. Set up any folders, bins and other systems of organization you plan to use during the school year. Figure out how you will take attendance, collect and hand back student work, store extra copies of handouts and organize forms and other professional papers.

You can also get organized digitally. Create folders on your computer for each class period or to hold lesson plans and resources for specific units. Set up accounts for students on any websites you plan to use and make sure you remember your passwords for any accounts you plan to access regularly. Clean up your website and make sure your gradebook is ready to go. If you already have student and parent e-mail addresses, you can also make sure they are easily accessible in the computer.

7. Stock Up on Supplies

Even though students have school supply lists, chances are many of them will forget their supplies. Back-to-school time is the perfect time to stock up on pencils, paper, notebooks, markers and other materials you may need throughout the school year. Many large discount stores offer deep discounts on these items during the weeks leading up to the start of school. While it may seem crazy to buy 100 notebooks or 1000 pencils at once, in the middle of the school year you will love that you do not have to pay full-price to restock these items in your classroom.

8. Get Ahead While You Have Time

The beginning of the school year is the perfect time to get ahead. While you cannot plan detailed lessons before you get to know your students, you can determine the general sequence of what you plan to teach and do some lesson planning in advance. You can also start to fill out the paperwork for a grant you know you’ll want to apply for, and make initial contacts for any field trips you know you are going to take. As you are going through your to-do list or organizing your classroom, if you start to set something aside to do later, stop and ask yourself if there is any part of it you can do now in order to make it easier to finish up later.

9. Ease into It

Don’t throw yourself into the new school year. Instead, ease into it. If you can, gradually start setting your alarm earlier and earlier so it’s not so much of a shock on the first day of school. Instead of rushing to get everything done two or three days before school starts, take a few hours each day a week or two before school starts and get a little bit of prepping done here and there. That large essay or massive homework assignment you want to give students can wait too. Instead of arming yourself with loads of papers to grade the first week of school, give a smaller assignment that you can check in class or have students take online. If students had a summer assignment to complete, check off those who brought it in and then give them a week to polish it, giving you some time to adjust to the new school year before being swamped with projects to grade.

10. Think Positive

Maybe you have to teach seven out of eight periods a day. Maybe you were saddled with multiple preps. Maybe your class roster contains some of the most notorious discipline problems in the school. Maybe your school performed poorly last year and the pressure is on to do well this year. Whatever issues you may face this school year, you must go into the year thinking positive.

Yes, you may have a full load of classes, but you get to influence that many more students. Prepping for multiple classes is hard, but at least you don’t have to teach the same thing all day. Those discipline problems are going to test your patience, but you’re guaranteed not to have a dull moment and maybe you’ll actually turn them around. And those test scores? With your amazing teaching skills, of course they’re going to go up.

You can be organized, have a cabinet full of supplies, and know exactly what to do during the first week of school, but if you have a negative attitude, none of it will matter. Whether this is your first year of teaching or your last year before you get to enjoy retirement, think positive. This school year will be successful and, if it’s not, it’ll be over in around 180 days. Then you’ll get to start again.

You can always ease students into the learning process with Back-to-School worksheets from HelpTeaching. We’ve also shared some special tips for new teachers.

What back to school tips and tricks would you share with teachers? Leave them in the comments!

When it comes to activities for the first month of school, preparation is key.  This allows you to kick off the school year on a great footing, being in the good graces of your school administration, keeping your stress levels down, and maintaining a great work-life balance.

Since the first month of school is about getting to know your students and allow them to settle into school again, having great activities lined up will help establish the tone for the rest of the year. We’ve compiled a list below of the many activities you can set up for your students while they get to know one another and figure out their team dynamics.

(Note: Most of the activities were designed with elementary students in mind, but many middle and high school students will enjoy them too!)

General Activities

1. Scavenger Hunt. Pair your students up and give them a list of objects to find around the classroom. You can use a scavenger hunt to help familiarize students with the layout of the classroom or to help them find important papers and other supplies they’ll need during the school year. A fun spin on this activity is to have students solve clues that will ultimately unlock a mystery box with a treat inside of it. Depending on the age of your students, the clues can range from mathematical problems, to chemistry questions, anagrams, and more.

2. All About Me. Ask students to bring a photo of themselves to school, or draw a self portrait. Students should write their names clearly and large. This can be pinned up in the classroom so that you and the students can learn everyone’s names easily. A fun extension a few days later is to play a game of “Guess Who” by reading the descriptions of students but hiding the face.

3. A Class Project. If you’ve ever had to pitch a tent, you’ll agree that it’s one of the biggest tests of communication and team work! While you’re not going to go camping in your classroom, you can find other activities that require communication and teamwork, such as constructing a bookshelf, decorating the classroom door, creating a bulletin board or classroom rules poster, or plant a classroom garden. This type of shared activity will help you learn your students’ communication styles and help you all learn to work together. It’s also a great way to spot leaders, and students who shy away from group activities.

4. Find a Friend. After a lot of missed time at school, being in a room full of peers can be intimidating for some students. An easy activity to help break the ice and encourage one on one conversations about shared interests is to create a “Find a Friend” worksheet wherein some interests with pictures are shown, such as hobbies, activities, sports, favorite foods (or worst foods). If two students list ice-cream as their favorite food, have them pair up start talking about the joys of ice-cream – what’s the best brand, topping, spoon or cone, etc. They can then present what they have in common to the class.

5. Bucket Filling. The concept of bucket filling has become popular in many schools. Give each student a plastic bucket to decorate. Talk to students about actions that fill their buckets (being kind, showing respect) and actions that take away from their buckets (not listening, putting others down). Throughout the school year kids can add and take away small stickers, coins, or other tangible objects from their buckets.

Language Arts Activities

6. Readers’ Theater. Take a popular fable or fairy tale and turn it into a readers’ theater piece for the class. Place students into groups and have each group decide how to perform the story for the class. This activity will help students become more comfortable speaking in front of their peers and give them a chance to learn to cooperate with others.

7. Group Writing. Have each student take out a piece of paper and write a sentence or first line of a poem on the top line. Students then pass their papers around the room with each classmate adding a sentence or line. At the end of the activity, every student has a class story or poem to share. Chances are students will think they’re hilarious too!

8. Writing Time Capsule. Give students a traditional back-to-school writing prompt, but add a bit of a twist. Take each student’s piece of writing and place it into a large mailing tube or envelope. Call it a “time capsule” and explain to students that you’ll pull each piece out at the end of the year so they can see how much their writing has improved.

9. My ABCs. Using the 26 letters of the alphabet as inspiration, have students write 26 words or fun facts to describe themselves. They can turn these into small ABC books or simply read them aloud. Use our handy alphabet charts as a template for this activity. You can even emojify this lesson by having students choose five emojis they feel represent them as a person. They should draw these emojis and then explain why, alternatively, the student displays their five emojis to the class and their peers can decipher them.

10. Read a Book. Since the beginning of the school year is so stressful, regularly take some time to sit with students and read a book together. You can let students suggest some of their favorite books to read or choose a fun chapter from the book that the whole class will enjoy.

Math Activities

11. Class Survey. Divide students into small groups and have each group write a summer or back-to-school themed survey question. Each group writes its question and creates a graph for the answers on a large piece of paper hung on the classroom wall. All students then walk around the room and plot their answers on the papers using colored sticker dots.

12. Me by the Numbers. Allow students to blend their artistic talents and math skills with this activity. Give students blank sheets of paper and have them draw pictures of themselves (or use photos) in the middle. Around their pictures, students answer and illustrate number related questions about themselves. For example: How old are you? How many pets do you have? What size shoe do you wear?

13. Find Someone Who… Bingo. Print a copies of the number-themed Find Someone Who… Bingo cards. Ask students get to know their classmates by talking with each other and writing the initials of the student they find that fits each statement in that box.

14. What’s Your Birthday? Challenge students to arrange themselves in a line across the room in order of birthday (day and month). The catch? No talking or writing.

15. Human Knot. This classic team-building activity also strengthens student understanding of special relationships and pattern recognition. Have 8 – 10 students stand in a circle, raise their right hands, and then join hands with someone across from them. Repeat with left hands. Important – students should be holding hands with two different people and not holding hands with a person next to them. Groups must then untangle the knot without letting go of hands. Try combining students into larger groups after they are successful untying themselves in smaller groups.

Science Activities

16. Lost on the Moon. In this exercise, students must work both individually and together to rank a set of items based upon their importance for surviving on the moon. After, teams can compare their ranking to how experts ranked the items. Get started with this online version.

17. Tower Building. Challenge small groups of students to construct the tallest tower they can using only the materials provided in a given time. Simple materials that work well include straws and paperclips, plastic cups, and index cards.

18. Class Pet or Terrarium. Raising and caring for a pet or growing plants in a terrarium can be a year-long class endeavor that helps foster an appreciation for nature. If your school allows small pets like fish or hamsters, students can work together to develop a job share schedule for feeding, cleaning, and vacation care. Another option is to have students design, build, and care for a class terrarium.

19. Classroom Makerspace. Introduce your students to the concept of makerspaces – a physical location to design, collaborate, and build. Designate an area of your classroom as a makerspace, and have the class brainstorm what should go in the space. Working together to design and create the space will get students excited to use it throughout the year.

20. Two Facts and a Science Fiction. In this variation of Two Truths and a Lie, each student researches two interesting, strange, or amazing science facts and makes-up one science falsehood. Students then take turns sharing their three statements and the class votes on which one is incorrect, or a piece of science fiction.

What activities do you use to help get to know your students and build a sense of community in your classroom at the beginning of the school year? We’d love for you to share them in the comments!

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Typically, it’s the students who receive the rules on the first day of school. However, there are some rules teachers should follow too. Following these rules on the first day of school and throughout the school year can help ensure success.

1. Be Welcoming

Many veteran teachers live by outdated axioms, such as “Don’t smile until Thanksgiving!” and “It’s easier to go from mean to nice than from nice to mean!” While these nuggets of wisdom contain some truth, experience has shown that most students – even those with behavior issues – benefit from a warm, welcoming environment, not one based on obsolete clichés. Greet your students as they come into your classroom. Make them feel comfortable in their new, unfamiliar surroundings. Allow them to take ownership of the setting by referring to it as “our classroom.” A strong presence in the classroom can take back momentum at a moment’s notice, even if you smile at your class before the leaves on the trees change color.

2. Be Specific

Many students won’t remember much of what you say on the first day of school and parents will sign your contract without giving it a second look. Despite those unfortunate truths, it is imperative that you design your syllabus or contract with specific information and properly enforce whatever you distribute to students and parents. If you weigh your grading components differently, break it down on paper. If there are stages to your behavior modification plan, list the steps you will take to correct misbehavior. If you give formal assessments on regular days, create a calendar. These simple steps will keep your students and their parents informed, and serve as evidence should your methods be questioned by an administrator or parent.

3. Be Prepared

Just because it’s the first day of school, it doesn’t mean you should improvise your lesson. Have the entire period planned out with ice breakers, activities, and, yes, even class work. Setting the tone on the first day doesn’t mean being strict and insensitive (see rule #1), but it does mean being consistent and organized. Students will remember if you ended class too early, and that can set a precedent that is hard to shake.

4. Be Collegial

Teachers often share the same students. These teachers likely meet as part of a team or to informally compare notes. If your schedule allows, it would be helpful to make an appearance in your colleague’s classroom during the first few days of school. This is a special show of support for someone whose skills you will rely upon for the next nine months. This united front of solidarity also help students see your educational interdependence. You will know the excuses, explanations, and issues from their other classes and you can use that information to better educate them.

5. Be Ready for Anything

A new school year and new students means a new set of unknowns. Never be surprised when something happens for the first time and always be prepared with a rational response to problems.

Whether it’s your first day of teaching or you’re a veteran of the back to school grind, following these five simple rules can make your first day a walk in the park and set the tone for a prosperous year of learning. Read Back to School Tips for Teachers for more advice on a great start of the new school year.

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Joe Pizzuto-Pomaco is an educator, writer, and editor who has taught in public and private schools 15 years.