If you can, spend a good part of the first few days of the year getting to know your class, and letting them get to know each other and you. It pays you back all year. It’s also a quick way to get their work on the walls, so the room feels like theirs from the start.
These ideas come mostly from Key Stage 1 and 2 classrooms, but plenty of them adapt for older pupils. They’re in no particular order.
Read what’s been passed on
Before they arrive, read the transition notes from last year’s teacher, and talk to them if you can. Check which pupils are on SEN support or have an EHC plan, and ask your SENCo about anything you’re not sure of. It’s not about pre-judging anyone. You just don’t want to find out in week three that a child can’t cope with the fire alarm.
Ask what they’d like to learn
On transition day, or the first morning, ask each child to write down one thing they’d like to learn this year. Keep the list. It’s easy to work some of their ideas into your planning, and they’ll notice when you do. Early on, pick one and build a short activity around it, and tell the class why: “We’re doing this because George asked.”
Make their own pegs
Have the children draw themselves and write their names for their coat pegs. You’ll learn names while they draw, and the pictures give away what they’re into. Get a second drawing for a birthday display or a star-of-the-day board.
Agree the class rules together
Talk about what the room is for (“this is where we meet every day to learn and have fun”), then agree the rules. Make it a deal: the class agrees a few things they’ll do, and suggests a few things they’d expect from you in return. No more than five each. Put them on the wall and have the children illustrate their favourite. Then keep your side of the bargain. When the rules are theirs, you can ask “Is that following our rules?” instead of “Stop that.”
Check your school’s behaviour policy first, so your rules sit inside it.
Play team games
Collaborative and trust games show you who works well together and who doesn’t. To mix groups up, hand out coloured cards or playing cards at random and say, “Find someone with the same card as you.” Name games are brilliant in the first week, for the adults as much as the children.
Show them who you are
Draw or paint a caricature of yourself as someone famous you’d like to be, with a speech bubble saying something about you. Or bring in a bag with five objects that say something about you (a football shirt, a bar of chocolate, a battered travel guide) and have the children draw five things for their own bag. They’ll remember the objects long after they’ve forgotten your first-day speech.
Wanted posters and passports
Children make a “wanted” poster of themselves with a short description, or a secret agent file, or a passport full of facts about themselves. Each one is also a piece of writing you can look at in week one.
Start a “why box”
Put out a box for questions. Pick a time each week to open it and answer them together. One rule: only sensible questions get read out. What they ask tells you a lot about what they’re interested in.
Go on a resource hunt
Younger children can hunt for the resources around the room and write labels for them. They learn where things live and practise their writing, and you get to watch how they work.
Redesign the classroom
Give them an afternoon to redesign the room, or to draw their perfect classroom. You might use some of their ideas, and you’ll learn what matters to them.
Make a “me” collage
Give each child a large outline of a person and a pile of old magazines, and let them fill it with pictures of things they like.
None of these needs much preparation. Time spent noticing the children in September comes back to you every week after.
For more on the first weeks with a class, see Establish Relationships Quickly with Students You Don’t Know, How to Build Effective Learning Relationships and Group Games for the Classroom.
Adapted from an original post by Sheli Blackburn.