The new school year is just a few weeks away and it’s time to start thinking of how to prepare for Back to School days. These five posts are jam-packed with information, from checklists to great activities, and will most likely prove to be very useful.
- In How to Prepare Your Classroom for the First Day of School, Sallie Borrink covers tips and resources on: organizing paperwork, curriculum and lesson plans; preparing an attractive and welcoming classroom environment; and purchasing and organizing classroom supplies.
- Janelle Cox’s Back to School: 10 Ways Teachers Can Prepares filled with food for thought on things like creating your classroom policies, establishing a communication system with parents, and setting up your classrooms.
- Who doesn’t want a fun teaching and learning environment? Beth Newingham provides Classroom Themes to Inspire Your School Year. Some of the themes sound extra fun, like the teacher who did a welcomed students with baseball caps, sports-themed utensils, and a Player Profile card to be filled out by each student so she could learn more about them.
- Those of you with a techie side, will love Vera Livshin’s 7 Back to School Ideas You Probably Never Thought Of; some of her topics include usefulness of class-specific blogs and sequenced posdcasting. An additional, easy-to-use EdTech tool I’d add is Juno Lesson Capture, which allows teachers to easily prepare lessons in advance for classroom flipping and also to record screen and voice during class time with the touch of one button—getting instant MP4 files—for after-school review.
- Lucie Renard’s 15 Creative Lesson Ideas for the First Day of School are so fun that I want to be a little kid and participate in some of them. Some of my favorites include “All about the Bag,” “Snowball Fight,” and the M&M’s game (just don’t get peanut M&Ms as so many kids are allergic).
I’ll keep my eyes peeled for more interesting resources to share as school approaches!
Make your whole school year a stellar one
Watch this 2 minute video: Overcoming Barriers to Classroom Learning
