3 Questions to Answer for Day 1 Success

If you're struggling with back to school activities for the first day, my advice is to keep it simple. You'll get plenty of engagement, information, and future success by focusing on just three simple questions: Who? What? and Why? Check out how I answer these questions on my first day in a 9th grade ELA classroom.

Who?

Obviously, the first thing they need to know is who you are, and I accomplish this in three ways. I include myself in the introduction questions and any icebreaker games we play. I also include a bulletin board over my desk that displays my name, images of some of my favorite things, and art students have created for me over the years. Finally, my personality definitely comes out as I lay out the style, structure, and expectations of my class.

The fun part is getting to know the students. For many years, we played Two Truths and a Lie and the Name Game. Since then though, I've adapted to more modern games. My students love Among Us, the card game that allows the students to sus out the Imposter among them. I'll also be using Speed Mingle, which is simple, but tried and true for getting students comfortable talking to new people.

After students get to know each other, I want them to get to know more about themselves as students, particularly English students, and, for the sake of my seating chart, so do I! For this, I give them the ELA Classroom Personality Quiz, which automatically sorts them into 4 types of ELA students for me (i.e. Leaders, Averages, Strugglers, Class Clowns) while delivering to them inspiring results about the way they think and learn and how they could grow or put their strengths to use.

What?

After students have satisfied their social curiosity, they'll want to know what you have in store for them over the course of the year or semester. You don't need to hit every single point here. Just let them know the major units, assignments, and assessments they'll be responsible for and give them a hint at your teaching style, so they have something to look forward to. I like to use a lot of Pear Deck at the beginning of the year to keep my students constantly interacting with my lesson, so I tend to use some game based Pear Deck slides on day one to get them involved right away.

Why?

If you really want buy-in from your students year round, you have to explain to them why the heck they need to be there year round. That may be an obvious answer for us, but they will need this explicitly drawn out and then repeatedly brought up farther down the road. In my day one slides, I ask the students to answer why they're there, which of course turns into responses of "My parents make me," "Because I have to be," etc. I challenge you to continue this conversation though by going even deeper. Ask them why their parents are making them or why they have to be there. Eventually, you will get them to the idea that it is good for the future of their intelligence, success, and wellbeing. 

Once these questions are answered, I usually get a lot of buy-in, but everybody presents these questions and gets the answers in their own way. You can check out my Day One Google Slides here and/or post your own in the comments!