The first days of school are so important to start the year off right. How you present yourself on the first day of school will set the tone for the entire school year. I remember being worried my first year of teaching. I didn’t know what I should do on the first day of school. Before I started school, I decided to read the book, “The First Days of School” by Harry Wong. I HIGHLY recommend this book. Whether you are a first year teacher or have many years of teaching experience, you NEED to read this book. After reading this book, my whole outlook on teaching changed for the better. I was better prepared to start the year on the right foot.
In this post, I am going to go over what I do on those super important first days of school. A lot of my ideas are from the book. I have gotten better each year on these critical first days, but my basic approach stays the same. First, I will give some tips you need to consider on the first days of school. Then, I will go into detail of my first days of school PowerPoint to help get you started!
1. Be Professional
Teaching is a hard profession. You care about these students you have in your classroom and you want the best for them. Sometimes, this leads to thinking you need to be their friend or always have fun activities or do fun things. I agree that learning should be enjoyable, but be careful how you present yourself on the first day of school. The students need to know that they are at school to learn. I make this super clear to my students on the first day of school. This doesn’t mean I don’t smile or I am tremendously strict.
Naturally over the school year you will start to get more relaxed on your management. You need to start as hard as you can so you can keep control of your classroom throughout the year. I want my students to respect me. I tell the students that I will respect them and I want respect in return. Having the students’ respect will keep you in control of your classroom throughout the year, which leads to more learning and a better classroom environment.
Those first few days I present myself in a professional way. I dress professionally. I act professionally. Not that we don’t already do this as teachers, but the students will eventually see us in all kinds of situations. I just try to be extra cautious of this the first few days.
2. High Expectations
You need to have high expectations and the students need to know them. No matter what you want your students to do, if you tell them what you expect and follow through with that, the students will always meet that expectation. Obviously, you need to keep in mind the age group of your students, but more than likely they will always rise to your expectations.
You need to really think about what you expect from your students. Make these expectations known from the first day. Once your expectations are known and taught, ALWAYS follow through. If you relax on your expectations, your students will notice and they will start to relax on following them. Setting these expectations is extremely important at the beginning of the year.
3. Model, Model, Model
No matter what your classroom expectations or classroom procedures are, you need to model correct behavior for your students. I have also read that you SHOULD NOT model incorrect behavior. I stick to this idea in my own classroom. I teach the classroom procedure by explaining the procedure and what I expect. Next, I physically model exactly what this should look like in my classroom. Then, I call on students to repeat this procedure correctly in front of the class. Depending on the age and procedure, you may have to do this multiple times.
Modeling correct behavior is an extremely important step in teaching procedures. You do not want to skip this part, no matter the age of your students. The first week of school, I repeat this process. It may take some time to do this with every classroom procedure, but I promise it is completely worth the time. If you take the time at the beginning of the year, you will spend less time going over it later in the year, so you actually can teach your content more.
4. Rules and Consequences
This is another important part of classroom management. The very first day of school, you need to make the rules known and what happens if a student chooses to break the rules. There are different types of classrooms that the book talks about. You can be student centered, meaning the students create the rules. You can be teacher centered, meaning the teacher makes the rules. Or you can combine these and both student and teacher works on making the rules. You can ultimately choose whatever works well for your personality.
In my opinion, I think making the classroom rules is the best. I am taking control of my own classroom and I make sure students know I am in control. This does not mean I don’t let students make decisions. Actually, I do believe in student choice, but I give students more choice on what reading station they want to do or where they work best in the classroom for silent reading. I make the rules and I make the consequences. I also make sure the students know this and I follow through with what I tell them.
I wrote another post about my classroom management rules and consequences in more detail, you can check here. Also, this post is about creative consequences you can use in the classroom.
First Days of School PowerPoint “Script”
The very first thing I created was a PowerPoint for the first days of school. In this PowerPoint, I included every classroom procedure I was going to teach my students. I put it in the order I wanted to teach it to my students. I even put in slides to do activities throughout those days that would break up my instruction, like 2 Truths and a Lie. The book calls this a “script” to follow of the first days of school. If you continue reading, I will go into more detail on what I include in this PowerPoint.
A PowerPoint is such a great idea to keep you on track and help you remember everything you need to teach to the students. I also save this PowerPoint and review it after winter break, and any other time I feel the students may need a reminder of the procedures. In this post, I am not going to go into super detail of my classroom procedures, if you want to check that out click here.
My First Days of School PowerPoint is on our TPT store here. It includes 50 slides of classroom procedures that I teach in the first few days of school.
Here is an overview of my first day of school PowerPoint (first few hours) in more detail:
The very first slide on my PowerPoint is a welcome to fifth grade sign and instructions for the students. I usually tell students to sit at the seat with their name on it and wait quietly with all their belongings with them. Once everyone is sitting in their seat, I do a quick introduction of myself.
Next, I will teach the quiet signal. I teach this so early, because I want to make sure I can always get their attention back to me. It is pretty easy to teach. I model it a few times, but I practice it multiple times that first day.
After this, I quickly teach breakfast procedures. At my school, students eat breakfast in the classroom. They will have their breakfast with them on the first day of school and I want to make sure they have time to eat. I will quickly go over all my expectations and I will also have a quick activity, like coloring a nametag about them, while they are eating or if they finish early. I normally give them 10 to 15 minutes to eat.
After breakfast, I will teach morning procedures. I will model correct behaviors and then will call on students to show how to correctly do this while they complete the morning procedures and put away their backpack. I may also call groups to put away their things at once, but still focus on the correct behavior.
By this point, the students probably need a break so I play 2 Truths and a Lie. I do one about myself and have the students choose which one they think is a lie. Next, I will have the students create their own and share them in their groups. When they are done sharing in the group, I will have the group decide on one student to share theirs with the whole class and me. This is a fun little activity that the students enjoy doing on the first day. Also, some students may get upset they can’t share theirs with you, so I tell everyone if they want to share with me, they can share it with me at recess. This saves a lot of time!
After this, it is usually time for specials. I will teach and model the lining up and hallway procedures. We will also practice multiple times in the hallway.
The rest of the day, I normally continue the PowerPoint and have small activities planned to break it up.
This is how my first day of school typically goes. I model and teach procedures and expectations. I go over the rules and consequences. I have many breaks planned to do fun get to know you activities. I mainly stick to my PowerPoint and make sure I teach everything I want to.
My First Days of School PowerPoint contains all my classroom procedures. If you want to know most of the classroom procedures I teach, check out this post here.
Sometimes, you can teach all the procedures in a couple days or sometimes it could take weeks, it really just depends on the grade level you teach. Below is a sample schedule that I would teach for the first three days of school.
I hope this overview of the first days of school really helps you with planning your first days of school. Be sure to check out the book, “The First Days of School” by Harry Wong.
Remember, how you start the school year will impact your teaching for the rest of the year. Make sure to have the best start right at the beginning of the year!
If you want to check out my complete First Days of School PowerPoint on our TPT store, click here!
Thank you for Continually Learning with us!
Kyle and Sarah
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