The First Days of School

The First Days of School!

Ideas and lessons for all teachers to build community, connect with kids, and launch into an unforgettable new school year.

Created by: Kelly Hilton • @kellyihilton • www.kellyhilton.org
For more #HyperDocs...visit www.hyperdocs.co and www.teachersgiveteachers.net

About this book

The first days of school are an exciting and busy time for teachers and students. Students are excited about a new school year and teachers are busy organizing classrooms. After a summer of sun and relaxation, I always need to create a checklist of things to do during the first weeks of school to set up a new classroom. My hope is that this book can be a guide and a resource for K-12 classroom teachers to get ideas for a new school year.

I organized ideas and resources in this book as strategies to introduce each application in the Google Drive to students. Introducing the applications and giving students time to play with the tools will prepare students for using the tools throughout the school year, build confidence with the tools for when they are later expected to use the tools to demonstrate understanding, and will build community in your classroom.

The idea to make this book was inspired by Harry & Rosemary Wong's book, The First Days of School. Their book provided me with so many ideas and resources over the years! I hope this mini book helps other teachers in the same way that their book helped me during the first days of school!

Table of Contents

Connect with Google Classroom......................
Identity Slides with Google Slides....................
Community Circles.............................................
Create small groups...........................................
Instagram and Google Draw.............................
Explore the World with Google My Maps........
Set Goals with Flipgrid.......................................
Build in Time for Play.........................................
Celebrate Cognitive Diversity............................

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page 12
page 14
page 16
page 18
page 20

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Connect with Google Classroom

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Google Classroom can be used in so many ways. Set up your classroom and share the code with students to join. Use classroom to share resources, collect student responses, and to guide discussions. How to set up a Google Classroom and add students HERE.

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Host a video throw down! Invite students to find a video (no longer than 4 minutes long) that will make the class laugh, motivate the class to work hard, or inspire the class this year when needed. Show one video a day until all students have been able to show their video.

1. Add this question into your Google Classroom.
2. Show students how to filter video searches.
3. Collect videos in a YouTube Playlist for later use.

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Get to know your students with forms!
Personalize a Google form with questions for your students. Share the form as an assignment in Google Classroom and get to know your students right away. Using a Google form is a helpful tool for this activity because students can rest assured that the contents of the responses that they share with you are confidentially shared. Change the questions on the form and connect with students all year long using personalized Google forms.

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Create a shared music playlist:
Ask students about what kind of music they listen to. Teach them how to find song lyrics and to search for videos that are appropriate with searching specifics. Invite students to find one appropriate song to contribute to a class music playlist. Share THIS Google Doc with the class and give everyone editing rights. Collect their favorite music and create a class playlist to listen to all year long in the classroom.

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Invite Guardians into Google Classroom: You are getting to know your students during the first weeks of school, but guardians will appreciate being able to see what is happening in your classroom too! Collect the Gmail address of the guardian. Check the box next to the student name in the "student" column, and invite their guardian. Guardians can see posted assignments and due dates. Have a student who needs extra support? This feature will keep the connection going strong between home and school.

Identity Slides

Students gET TO KNOW eachother when they are given the opportunity to design a slide that describes them!

This lesson was inspired by @jheil65, the lead for the 7th Annual California EdTech Team Summit!

Make a sample slide and create a shared slide deck. Sample HERE

Community Circles

Bringing students together in a circle at the beginning of class or at the end of a week is a very powerful instructional strategy. The circle represents equity of voice and it is a place to practice speaking and listening. There is no beginning or ending, and thus the community comes together to get know to know each other and to problem solve through out the school year. The circle routine is a common practice in classrooms who practice restorative justice, Socratic seminars, PBIS, and TRIBES. Circles can be formed with chairs or desks, or with students sitting on the floor; inside or outside of a classroom. My favorite circle was in a 7th grade teachers garden outside of his classroom. He met with students every Friday afternoon and experienced a very positive impact in the students! CLICK HERE for some sample circle topics. To learn more about restorative practices, CLICK HERE.

Circles are tier one in quality core instruction for response to intervention (RTI) and tier one in positive behavior intervention support (PBIS).

A Path to Community

Organize students into small groups of 4-6. Coordinate activities for students to get to know each other and build trust. Build on lessons over the course of the school year. Learn more about how to build inclusion and create a classroom community of influence here.

Keep it simple! Use these four agreements when facilitating activities.:
• attentive listening
• appreciation/no put downs
• mutual respect, and
• the right to pass

Learn more about the origin of the program here.