Are you looking for some fun and easy back to school activities to do with your students at the beginning of the school year? Let me tell you about all the fun things I do! Because I teach five different grade levels there’s a variety of stuff I can do, and I will tell you about seven of them here today. You can pick and choose the ones you like and try them out for yourself.
Before I start I also want to just quickly make you aware of my 7 Best Whiteboard Games PDF that I made, which you can grab for yourself if you need instructions to seven easy and lovely games to play with your students using just a whiteboard and marker! Click here to get it!
Back to school theme activities
Find Someone Who
One of my all-time favorite back to school activities is Find Someone Who! It’s my favorite game because it helps students introduce themselves and get to know their classmates in a super casual way that even gets competitive. In this game, students have to find a number of names to match the prompts on the sheet. Example of a possible prompt: Find someone who… ‘is wearing a dress’. Students will have to find the name of a classmate that is actually wearing a dress and write that name down.
Now you can make the prompts as meaningful as you like. For example, you could also ask: Find someone who… Has an older sister, or… Is an only child, or … Has been bullied before. But if students have never met, it’s probably good to stick with: … has a dog, or … is wearing jeans.
Discussion cards
Another thing I like to do at the beginning of the year is have students work in small groups to have an introduction discussion. I provide each group with a set of discussion cards with questions on them that they’ll have to use to start a conversation about themselves. These discussion cards make sure that they discuss everything that they should know about each other, and that they share who they are with their new classmates. This is a great activity for students to get to know each other fast!
Back to school activities for kids
The previous activities can be used for kids of all ages, in my opinion. But the next few are definitely great for the younger ones!
4 Corners
Four corners the way I play it works like this: On the board, I put up a question to pose to students as a whole group and I give them four options to choose from. The options correspond with the corners of the room. Students have to stand up before I ask a question, and when they choose the answer that applies to them they must stand in the corner that matches the answer. Then I ask specific students why they have chosen an answer. This helps students introduce themselves, share about their likes and dislikes, and learn a lot about each other fast. Example: What is your favorite food? a. pizza, b. french fries, c. sushi, d. pasta.
Name games
Name games are great for groups of students who have only just met. I know a few that I will use with my new homeroom students, who are new to the school.
The first one is where we all sit in a circle and one student says: I am… And I like…. They will say their name and whatever letter their first name starts with is the first letter of the food they must say. So, I would say: ‘I am Dominique and I love donuts’. The next student must repeat what I said and then say their own name and food, and so on and so forth.
The next one is where we all sit in a circle on our chairs with one student in the middle holding a rolled up newspaper. I will call the name of one of the students in the circle and the student in the middle must whack this student on the knees with the newspaper. In order not to get caught, the student whose name was mentioned must quickly call out another name so that the student in the middle will go after that person. This process repeats itself until there’s one student that can’t think of another name and they are the new student in the middle.
Lineup game
The last game that I love to play to help students get to know each other is the lineup game. It works like this: I will ask the group to line up in a straight line according to … First, I will ask them to line up according to their first name. All the way on the left is A and all the way on the right will be Z. Then I will ask them to line up according to last name, according to birthdate, according to height, according to hair color from light to dark, etc. Besides getting to know each other, this game is also great to see who is a leader, or who is active and who is passive in these situations.
Back to school writing activities
All About Me Flip Book
A wonderful way for students to introduce themselves at the beginning of the year is to write about themselves! I use this fun flip book that has five prompts to get students to share some information about their lives with the rest of us. It’s a lovely way for me as a teacher to get to know them, and it’s a great way for students to show what they can already do as writers in the target language .
Letter to self
For older students, it’s great to have them send a letter to themselves at the beginning of the year, in which they share their hopes for the coming school year. Ask them what they hope will happen, what their goals are, and who they hope to be this year. This too is a great way to see how well students can already write and where you can help them improve, but also learn something about them.
Back to school activities high school
A great activity that I’ve been doing for a few years with my high school students has been (Un)True stories! For (Un)True stories I have to always buy some flashcards, because they are just pretty, and students take it seriously when they have to write on them. I tell them they must write a story which is either true or not true, so made up, and they get 5 to 10 minutes to do that.
Then each student has to read their story to the rest of the group and the class must decide whether that story is true or untrue. When they get it right and the story is indeed true they get a point, and the other way around when they think the story is not true and it is indeed a made-up one they also get a point. Storytellers that convince more than half of the class that their story is not true when it actually was, or the other way around, get three points. Whoever has the most points at the end, wins the game.
Virtual back to school activities
Of course, we all hope we don’t have to go back to virtual teaching, but it is good to have a plan ready for if we do. Of the above activities that I have mentioned some of them can also be done online. The flip book I made has an online version in Google Slides ™ with 6 prompts. The discussion questions you can pose in breakout rooms in Zoom. You can also play Find Someone Who in breakout rooms, and the letter exercise of course is easy to set in an online platform as well.
So these are the middle school back to school activities I do with my students. See what activity or activities fit your students and your age groups and try them out! I know you’ll have a lot of fun with them! I’ve made a bundle out of some of these back to school activities and I have them up in my store. Check out the bundle here if you want some ready to use our resources right now!
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