Back to School...Again

Holidays never seem long enough. 

For some reason, the much-needed and absolutely deserved break that we get for summer seems to race by. 

 Maybe it’s because we jam-pack our break with fun-filled trips, spending quality time with friends and family, or just catching up on a book or two that we always plan to read during the school year, but never get around to it. 

 As we draw closer to the new school year, I’m sure that many of you (me included!) are beginning to fill our holidays with the excited thoughts of new students, new classes, and new learning experiences. Oh, and of course, the not-so-exciting thoughts of planning, marking, reporting, and keeping our classroom desk from looking like a tornado has hit it. 

The importance of making an excellent start to the year is also something that’s probably crossed your mind once or twice (or ten times!). 

From the very beginning of the school year, we are aiming to engage and enrich our students with activities that are fun and challenging at the same time. If we can do that early on, success for our students is so much more attainable. I wanted to share some of my own resources that I’m going to be using at the beginning of the school year. I’m super proud of these, as I think I’ve nailed the balance between learning and fun that every teacher wants in a resource. 

Escape rooms are such a fun way to revise new concepts. 

Make this free resource one of your go-tos when learning about fractions and decimals. There is very little prep involved, and your students will not even realize that they are learning!

 

This back-to-school-themed escape room is such a fun way to review math concepts with your students.  Students are able to review integers operations, proportions, two-step equations, and area and circumference equations, all while having a bit of digital fun!  The best part of this resource for you?  It’s no-prep, so you can enjoy your holidays just that little bit longer. 

While it’s not always in our thoughts during the mad rush of back-to-school prep, having good sub resources should be part of our planning.  I love this bundle of fun-self checking activities which is perfect for your ‘sub-folder’.   

They are aimed at a 6th-grade level and are an engaging no-prep way to get your students revising operations with fractions, surface area equations, and more. 

 

In addition to sharing some of my go-to resources, I want to share the best piece of advice given to me about how to start the school year off great:  

Make sure your expectations and rules are established from the very first day.  

Building a rapport with students creates the groundwork for the most productive learning experiences.  Think about how you want students to learn and act in your classroom, and communicate these clearly.  

Refer to them frequently, and recognize students for following your rules.  

Better yet, get them to be part of the classroom rule-making.  They will take ownership of the expectations, the classroom and their own behaviors. 

Do you have any back-to-school tips or go-to resources?  Leave a comment below.  I’d love to hear from you!