Survive Your First Day of Teaching

Let’s have a more detailed look at what this means:

You’ll start your day with a warm-up activity, like a song, the date and day, weather chart etc. Then you’ll introduce yourself, trying to keep it light and focusing on what will get reactions from your class. Letting them guess your age can be a great (if completely humbling) activity, and telling them your interests can also be good, if you can link your interests with theirs. This can get you closer to your group, but especially with teenagers this can make you look like a complete fool, too, so if you teach sensitive age groups, try to find out from other teachers or kids in the school what they like doing at that age.

After this, you can let your students introduce themselves – to the whole class or in smaller groups, and there a million different ways to do this. Exactly how you do this will differ depending on a lot of factors such as class size and age, so have a look around the internet and find some creative ways of getting this done that aren’t too complicated for you to do on that first day. Then you can get into your explanation of class rules and routines, and then move into your subject area.

For your subject area lesson, you really should over-prepare. First, choose your core content and activity, and then develop a lot of smaller activities, games and songs that you can use around this content. You don’t know your class, and if they eat your lesson in five minutes, and then start looking around for something to do, it’s nice not to have to think of activities on the fly. Conversely, if you give them a five-minute time filler and then find that they need to take the whole morning to do it, it’s good to know whether you can let the class run with it.

Here’s a list of websites that will give you some great tips and ideas for activities. Many have downloadable worksheets and bulletin board templates, and you’ll probably find them so good you’ll use them well after your first day!

Dltk-Dids: this site has awesome downloadable content! Printables range from letters and numbers to greeting cards, so you’re sure to find what you need.

Enchanted Learning: Another killer site for printables, with lots of activites on a wide range of subjects. They even have Spanish language activities. There is a membership option, with banner-free pages and easily printable downloads, but you can still get a lot of materials without joining.

Youtube: this can be a great way to get and store visual clips for your classes. Just check your school policy on using this site, and know the exact page you’d like to use rather than searching in class, as some content from here is not appropriate for class and you can have copyright issues. Unfortunately, your IT administrator may have locked your school network out of this site, as well.

Teach-Nology: Literally thousands of printables, worksheets, rubrics and rubric generators, and all for free. Added to that tips and themes, and you’ve got a lot of help on this page.

I Love That Teaching Idea: A great site for tips for teachers and substitutes, with ideas ranging from art to writing, math to health and holidays, this is a good site to go to for help and a fresh approach to a subject.

Just a quick disclaimer: it’s your responsibility to find out your school’s attitude to anything you get from these websites, and to take into account any copyright laws that may apply. I’m not responsible for this.