The first week of school can be many things- exciting, overwhelming, and a whirlwind. This is especially true in a self-contained setting. Read on to find out some simple and effective activities and strategies to use for the first week of school.
Learn students’ interests
It may sound obvious, but the first week is a great time to start getting to know your students. Of course, it will take longer than a week to build those relationships! Before jumping into the curriculum, time should be spent learning your students’ interests, strengths, areas of need, and other important information.
There are many ways to start building these relationships. You can have them complete an interest survey, like this one. Depending on the age of your students, it can be more basic and you can read it to them. Or, it can be more involved and independent. Using their interests wherever you can, such as in read alouds, projects, etc., will foster engagement and positive relationships.
I also like to give questionnaires to parents for them to complete during the first week of school. They know their child better than anyone, and can provide very specific information that the child may not be able or willing to communicate themselves.
Play fun getting to know you games
I love playing games with the students the first week of school to build the classroom community. The “toilet paper game” is one of my favorites and is super simple. All you have to do is grab a roll of toilet paper. Tell students to choose as many squares as they’d like, that’s it! Don’t tell them what it is for.
Once everyone has their squares, you can then explain for every square, they have to tell everyone one thing about themselves. I always participate in this myself, and I may have a student choose squares for me since I know the trick!
If you have students that are nonverbal, you can have them draw pictures to tell things about themselves. You can also print out a variety of pictures/statements ahead of time that you can read to them and have them choose to describe themselves. For example, they may choose a card that says “I like to play sports”.
Establish rules and procedures
It is best to start off strong during the first week with implementing classroom procedures. As soon as students arrive, model for them what the arrival routine is.
I like to do a daily morning meeting. On day one, we come up with a list of rules as a class. I write it on an anchor chart and have all the students sign it. We discuss what those rules look like and sound like.
It is helpful to have students practice those procedures right away, such as having the class demonstrate how to raise their hand to answer a question, how to walk from their seat to the carpet, etc.
Of course, depending on the group of students (their age, areas of need, etc.), this can be very simple or more complex.
Simply Special Ed has a great first week resource where you can find pictures and messages for morning meeting, simple visual schedules you can use with students, etc.
Get to know students’ academic levels
One thing I always like to do during the first week of school is introduce the class library to students. We discuss how to choose a “just right” book using the five-finger rule. I then give students time to choose a few books using the rule.
Once they have their books, I give them time to either independently read or buddy read. I use this time to sit with students one on one and listen to them read. This gives me a good idea of where they currently are with their reading levels.
If a student cannot read, you can use this time to have them look at the pictures and ask some phonemic awareness questions (ex: I see a dog, what letter does dog start with?), You can also ask comprehension questions (ex: this book is called “A Day at the Beach”. What do you think will happen in this story?) It is helpful to jot down some quick notes on each student.
This same idea can also be done for math. There are plenty of fun first week math activities. I like to give each student play-doh and ask questions such as “How many brothers and sisters do you have?” or “How many pets do you have?”. They use the play-doh to make the number.
Depending on the students’ levels, you can make it more advanced by asking them to build an addition sentence to show their answer, show their answer in tens and ones, etc. This is a good way to observe students’ current math levels as well.
The first week of self-contained can be challenging, but it doesn’t have to be! It can be stressful trying to fit everything into one week, especially if you are under pressure to jump into a curriculum right away. Remember that getting to know your students, building relationships, and establishing rules and procedures are the most important things for setting the tone for a successful school year.
