Nine Back-to-School Ideas for Middle School Teachers

Heading back to school after the summer is exciting!  There are so many fresh ideas to try and ways to recharge your classroom and teaching.

The Middle School Mob has pulled together nine of our favorite back-to-school hacks, tips, and tricks.  We hope you'll find a few here that will get your year off to a great start!

Getting organized 

Michele of Michele Luck's Social Studies says that this is a must for new teachers. This bundle includes everything to get the year started and to keep it moving in the right direction! It walks you through classroom organization and helps you be prepared for dealing with classroom management, teacher evaluations, lesson planning, and more!

Do you need a seating chart?

Classroom organization is one of the first things that come to mind at back to school time. Desk or seating chart arrangement, along with ideas and planning for behavior management are priorities. A good seating chart template can be the saving grace for the middle or high school classroom.

Michele of Michele Luck's Social Studies shares some ideas about how to best use a seating chart.

Creative mini books

Lisa from Mrs. Spangler in the Middle says, "As a middle school teacher, I have to make 130 copies any time I need all of my students to have something. So if my syllabus is a couple of pages, that really adds up and I only get 2 cases of paper per year!

"This mini-book is just ONE sheet of paper for each student! And it gives the students something to do with the syllabus instead of just pretend to read it. ;) Not to mention it's creative and gives off a warm, fuzzy feel. :) "It's also completely editable so you can pre-print all the information from your syllabus on it or have students record the important information on it. Finally, it comes with a video to show you and your students how to assemble it."

You can find her paper-saving mini book here.

Poetry anyone?

Sharon from Classroom in the Middle says, "Poems make great short readings for the first days of school, and poems about school are a classic choice for beginning of the year activities in language arts classes. Here is a list of ten good titles, as well as a few links where you can find even more. The poems range from funny to serious. Some are about school and others are about perennial middle school topics."

Create an Escape!

Looking for a novel way to keep students thinking? Lyndsey from Lit with Lyns describes how she uses a digital escape room to engage her students at the start of the school year.

Are you going digital?

If so, Shana from Hello, Teacher Lady has some great tips for you.

Shana says, "Google Classroom has been the organizational hub of my classroom for the past few years, and I'm on a mission to share the love with as many teachers as possible. Since we're in the midst of back to school season, there's no better time to start saving time, paper, and sanity. If you've been wondering about the benefits of using Google Classroom, I've rounded up the top 12 reasons why Google Classroom should be your new BFF."

Flipping for this flipbook

Stephanie from The Marvelous Middle has a great idea for helping students keep track of their syllabus.

"The school year starts off smoothly with detailed classroom policies and procedures. A classroom syllabus explains how my classroom runs and the curriculum covered during the school year," Stephanie says.

"But, my students always seemed to lose this syllabus a few weeks into the school year. This flipbook syllabus solved this problem because it is sized to be glued right inside an interactive notebook. My students no longer lose this important information. It is always at their fingertips."

Building routines with task cards

Susie from Anchored in Reading shares this idea for how to use task cards to create routines in the classroom:

"This back to school resource proves valuable in many ways. Used as a bell ringer, these task cards help you build a routine while starting each class with students on-task and working. In addition, some of the concepts are review which may be beneficial for our students getting back into the swing of things! You could also use these task cards as exit slips or informal assessment."

Creating a yearlong plan

Marypat from Just Add Students shares this blog post with ideas of how to set up, create and use a yearlong plan for your ELA standards.

She says, "A yearlong plan will help you teach (all the) writing; it will save you time and energy — and help you remain accountable for what you’re expected to teach this year. When Sunday night rolls around and you're planning your week, a ylp is a lifesaver!  The lessons plans practically write themselves!  An additional bonus?  Great for Meet the Teacher night as well!"   You can find her free editable yearlong plans here.

So, what do you think?  What new ideas are you implementing this year?  Let us know in the comments below!

Here's to a fresh, new school year!

Activities to Use Around the Holidays in ELA

Hi Everybody!  This is Lyndsey from Lit with Lyns, and I'm going to share some activities I use with my students right before the holidays!

We all know that the last couple of weeks before the Christmas holiday break can be, well.... interesting to say the least (that's why I thought this meme by Presto Plans was so fitting).  Every year I try to come up with ways that I can continue to teach my students things that are Common Core aligned, but will also keep them engaged.


Last year, I decided to use these Holiday Task Cards to review figurative language, and my kids LOVED it!

Then we read "Twas the Night Before Christmas" by Clement Clarke Moore, because we all know that students at all ages still love to hear this.  We read this as a class to begin with, and then students worked with a partner to analyze all of the figurative language and sound elements that they could find.  Once we were finished, they asked if they could find more Christmas-themed figurative language on their own, which I thought was great!

What activities do you use right before the holiday break?  I'd love to hear about it in the comments below.

Day One: Engagement Station

Tori here, from Tori Gorosave: An English Teacher's Journey. Back to School is literally right around the corner for me and to be honest, I am super excited! I miss my classroom and it the last year my youngest one will be on campus with me before he heads off to high school. Sigh. Anyway, I want to spend a few minutes and share my favorite tips and tricks for the first day of school. 

Nothing is more deadly to student and teacher morale than bored and disengaged students on the first day of school. The first day of school sets the tone for the rest of the year, so start your year off showing students your class will be a year full of engagement, activity, and involvement by creating stations to introduce your classroom rules, procedures, expectations, and summer reflections. 

Now, I can stand in front of my 8th graders and captivate them for an entire period, but frankly I don't always like being the center of attention and holding students' attention for that long is hard! I want my students working just as hard, if not harder, than me, and if all they are doing the first day is listening to me talk or watching my presentation, then we have a problem.

Here's a preview of how I conduct my first day of class. I assign five mini assignments via stations to my students.  The stations can be completed in small groups, individually, or even presented by the teacher in eight minute segments. I have classes that range from 32-40 students, so I set up two table groups per station so I don't have groups larger than four students. I create a placard title for each station, place a task card or direction sheet next to the placard, plenty of paper or assignment sheets (depending on the task), and a completed sample which is all about me. I let my kids choose their groups of four and sit at a station (it doesn't matter what order they complete the stations in). I set my timer for eight minutes and display it under my ELMO so the class can see how much time they have. Once my timer goes off, students have thirty seconds to get up and rotate to the next station. I usually set my stations up clockwise since I give them such a limited amount of time to rotate. I then repeat the process until all groups have hit all five stations (about 45 minutes). Time flies! It is amazing to have students suffering from shock and awe on the first day once the timer goes off for the last station and students have to start collecting their work and prepare to head on to their next class!

Here is a breakdown of the five stations I use on the first day of school:

Station 1 is a syllabus scavenger hunt. I designed my syllabus to only including content I thought was imperative. I formatted my syllabus like an infographic to make it more visually appealing and capture student and parent attention right off the bat. 

For the syllabus scavenger hunt, I create questions focusing on specific areas of my syllabus. Students need to use the syllabus to answer the questions on a task sheet. 

To get students thinking ahead, Station 2 is a "Twitter Goals" activity. Students are asked to create one goal for my class for the present year, one overall education goal for the year, and one personal / family goal for the year. They explain these goals in 140 characters or less and complete them on a assignment sheet by filling out Twitter message bubbles.  

Reflecting upon and sharing highlights of their summer is one of my students favorite activities. Station 3, "My Summer in Pictures" requires students to choose three pictures to showcase their summer. The pictures can be snapshots from their phone or computer, or generic symbols that represent a person, place, thing, or idea. Underneath each picture, I have students write a caption explaining the significance of the picture.  My students love to complete Station 3 digitally, but many students also create beautiful scrapbook pages. I have students brainstorm their ideas during class station time, but they create the final product at home.

Again because I wanted to have students introduce themselves to me right away, at Station 4 students describe themselves as an emoji. I have a few lists of emojis laid out on the table, but most students are so familiar with emojis that they rarely reference the lists. To complete this station, students choose their emoji and draw it (or if you are digital they can just copy and paste the emoji onto a slide), underneath the emoji they have to demonstrate rockin' vocabulary and choose an adjective that best describes them (it should coincide with the emoji), lastly I have my students write a paragraph explaining how the emoji and adjective describe them. This is such a neat way to get to know a student from their personal perspective.

The final station, Station 5, consists of a "Student Resume." I have a stack of resume task sheets laid out on the table, and students grab one and complete the sections. This resume provides me with parent contact information (it is amazing how often the info on here provides me with working contact numbers where as the office emergency cards don't), student expectations of me, the grades students earned the previous year, a list of my students favorite things, etc. 

That sums up how I use stations to run my first day of school. If you want to use these stations ideas in your class, head on over to my TpT store and grab a set of Back to School Task Cards for yourself.

Have an amazing school year!