Get your students up and moving around on the first day back to school
After I have gotten students seated, checked role, and played Roll the Dice as a quick icebreaker, I get to the heart of my first day activity. This activity works for either middle or high school students, and has them active and moving around. It initiates discussion on expectations and behavior without direct teaching (and losing your voice at the end of day!). Through this activity they will find commonalities with their peers and build empathy for fellow student’s needs.
First Day of School activity for teachers
Interactive Gallery Walk
The gallery walk is simple enough. There are eight sentences that students must complete. These sentences all have students thinking about their thinking! What do they need to be successful students? What type of environment helps them learn best? What is their goal for completing this class?
I learn best when the environment around me is ______.
Welcome Back to School Gallery Walk
When working in groups, I need my group members to do the following: _____________.
Moving around the room
My classroom this year is smaller than previous years and with increased security issues they have asked us to stay inside the classrooms as much as possible. Although his made the gallery walk a little more challenging, as I usually use the locker space around me to more comfortably move during a gallery walk. Despite this challenge, I accomplished it, but we definitely had the feeling of bumper cars as we rotated.
Supplies
- Sticky Notes/pens pencils
- Printed copies of station numbers and sentences
- a timer
- quick review of the objective and procedures
Discover and Categorize during this First Day of School activity for high school students
After completing the rotations at each station, ( I give a minute and half) we move onto discovering similarities in answers and categorizing ideas. Members of the group are responsible for gathering all sticky notes at that station and evenly distributing them to each group member.
Like playing a game of goldfish, students try to find “matches” in their group.
The goal is to take the 28 or so individual sticky notes and move them into 4-8 smaller piles. Look for similar answers or answers that seem to be saying similar ideas.
Ending the activity: Evaluate and Create
Once they have categorize time to summarize main ideas (responses) and make inferences as to why these answers were similar. For example: What does it say about students’ needs in a learning environment? How are you similar to your fellow classmates?
When finished students summarize ideas on a individual whiteboard (or paper) and share their findings to the classes in a share out at the end.
Above all, the goal is help them understand that is NOT just me, the teacher, saying quiet and focus is needed to do well on a test, or a quiet environment helps me comprehend a difficult text, but their peers!
Between the gallery walk and icebreaker, my classes have had a full day! Our 1-to-1 technology is never up and running day one! Therefore, having a technology free activity that does not require lots of copies, is helpful.
Also, we have had good discussions and I have created a first impression that did not put them to sleep!
Find the resources for this gallery walk in my TPT store. In addition, this includes resources for a virtual gallery walk!
I look forward to sharing a wonderful creative writing first week using poetry mentor text!
Thank you for stopping by!
