How do I plan my First Day of School?
Oh man, the first day of school. There are SO many things to cover with your class! How do students ask to go to the bathroom? Where is the bathroom? How many paper towels should they use in the bathroom? What is actually considered a bathroom emergency? AND THAT’S JUST THE BATHROOM! It can be overwhelming to say the least!
As teachers, we KNOW procedures and routines are the backbone of our classrooms. If those aren’t tight, everything else is seven million times harder.
But also as teachers who spend a great deal of our lives with small children, we know we can’t just focus on routines and procedures the first day (or week) of school, because…
The students will lose listening stamina and not remember everything anyway, and…
building community, kindness, and trust in your classroom is just as important as setting procedures, rules, and routines. (Don’t sic’ the routines police on me!)
So… how do we live somewhere in-between? Covering the necessary procedures while also not becoming a “snooze fest”?
It’s all about that balance, baby.
Check out the Freebies page for a free guide to help you create your own First Day of School schedule!
How to Make a First Day of School Schedule
The goal for your First Day of School is to balance three main types of activities in the classroom:
Set-in-Stone times (think lunch, recess, specials),
Top Priority Routines Instruction, and
Fun Stuff.
Grab some sticky notes (3 different colors if you have them), your phone or computer (to look up emails/times), and a marker (or 3 different colors of markers if you didn’t have the various sticky notes).
1. Set-in-Stone Times
First, you are going to pull up any emails from administration about schedules for the first day. We are looking for those set-in-stone times. (Remember, some of these will be different for the first day of school than your typical school day routine.)
Some examples to look for: Student Arrival/Bells, Bathroom Breaks, Specials (Art/Music/PE/Library), Lunch, Recess, Dismissal, etc.
Write each set-in-stone scheduled time on a sticky note (all the same color) and include the time. For my example schedule below, I have noted them in pink. Put these times on your desk in order of when they occur, leaving space for the time chunks between.
2. Routines
Next, we need to put in teaching the routines. These are the MOST IMPORTANT procedures and routines that your students need to know those first few days of school.
Grab your next color of post-it notes. We aren’t going to write times on these quite yet, but just general titles of routines we need to teach. An easy place to start is to look at your set-in-stone post-its and think about what routines you might need to teach prior to those transitions. You are going to want to teach the routines for each of those set-in-stone transitions probably right before they happen (with the exception of arrival because, well, they haven’t arrived yet). So go ahead and place your routine post-its in the available time blocks between the set-in-stone times that make the most sense. In my example, I am using yellow to note the routines I want to teach.
Check out this post for specifics on what you might want to cover with each of these routines.
3. Fun Stuff
Finally, we are going to identify pockets of time where we can add in some fun stuff. With your third color post-it note, write down “brain breaks”, ice breaker games, getting to know you activities/crafts, anything that would bring some fun! (Check out this post with more details on ideas for fun stuff!) Put those post-its in any empty time pockets you can find in the schedule. Bonus if the activities somewhat correlate to the routines you are teaching around that time (i.e. line order games around the same time you talk about how to line up).
Now, stand back and look at your schedule’s balance. Do you need to break up the routines anywhere to sprinkle in more fun? Do you need to group any routines to be able to cover them all?
Here is an example of my First Day of School schedule so you can see how I tried to really balance the fun with the routines. You’ll note that because we were going to be in our room from 8:45-10:50, I made sure to schedule multiple “fun” breaks instead of just filling that huge time chunk with routines.
If you want to see my full guide that includes a breakdown of each of my routines, fun activities, and plenty of extras - just enter your name and email below and I will send it your way!
Check out the posts below to see what you might want to include in each of the Routines and some ideas for Fun Stuff you can do that first week! For now, go ahead and get a rough sketch of your schedule and then check those posts out for more specifics on what you can do that day!
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