Back to school tips and first day activities

On this page you will find free back to school and beginning of school tips, classroom seating ideas and charts, and first day activities

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Back to School Tips

How to Start School Successfully by Harry and Rosemary Wong. This article is on teachers.net

Smart Starts for the Best School Year Ever by Barbara

and Sue Gruber. This article is on teachers.net

Top Six Keys to Being A Successful Teacher from About.com

Setting Up Your Classroom for Success

Beginning of the School Year (10 Tips) Click the second topic

Top 10 Things to Do Before School Starts

First Day Checklist This checklist will help you to see if you are ready for that important first day and is from kindercorner.com

Back to School Checklist from Scholastic This checklist from Scholastic is a great reminder of things that need to be done. It will help new teachers, and remind experienced teachers of things to think about before school begins

Welcome to __ Grade Bookmarks Great welcome bookmarks for grades 1-6 from busyteacherscafe.com. These are available in color or black and white

Welcoming Students Back to School A Microsoft Word template for a welcome letter and a Powerpoint template for class rules are included here along with other tips

Tips for Getting Organized Some excellent tips here that can save you some time later. This is from kimskorner4teachertalk.com

Fabulous First Day Activities This is from Scholastic

Icebreakers These ideas from Education World help you get to know your students and helps them learn each others names. There are thirteen pages of ideas

Activities for the First Day 1 Getting to know you; ideas for that important first day. This is from educationworld.com

Activities for the First Day 2 Fourteen great activities for the first days of school. This is from educationworld.com

First Day of School Activities This is from the Busy Bee Activity Page

Class Opening Activities Most of these activities can be used for grades K -2. These activities are from Center for Innovation in Education, Saratoga, California. You can also use my Counting Caterpillar during this time

Printable Name Tags These beautiful animal name tags are from Jan Brett.

Printable School Passes from Jan Brett Print these on card stock and laminate. I would print two of the same tags and glue together before laminating. Make an extra set in case one is lost. You might want to put your room number or teacher name on the bottom

Creating a Seating Chart from Digital Photos

Seating Chart Template for PowerPoint97 or later. This template from Microsoft can be used for many different kinds of room arrangements. You could include pictures of the students also

Seating Chart from Microsoft for PowerPoint 2003

Printable Classroom Set-Up Tool Set up and print your classroom layout. This tool allows you to place desks in any formation and put student's names on a numbered list (requires Flash)

Name Review An activity to help the teacher learn names quickly

Parent Resources These are excellent handouts to give parents at open house or parent conferences. They contain ideas on how parents can help their children at home. (Scroll down to "Your First Grader", etc.)

Classroom Job Ideas If you need a fresh idea for classroom jobs, check on these ideas at A to Z Teacher Stuff

A Classroom Job for Every Child Change jobs only eight times during the year

Getting to Know Each Other Activity

Back to School Ideas A variety of useful back to school ideas from Hummingbird Educational Resources (scroll down)

Beginning of Year Ideas and Tips for Kindergarten Teachers These ideas are from Kinderthemes.com

Also check the Classroom Management , Teacher Timesaver , and Bulletin Board pages

Back to School Bulletin Boards

More Back to School - More activities, open house ideas,

templates and power point, crafts, parent communication and more