Back to School season is always an exciting time of the year. New students, new classes, and a whole new school year stretching out before you can be exhilarating, and maybe a little overwhelming. In this post you’ll find easy-to-use back to school activities to help you start off on the right foot in your math classroom.
When you’re starting off a new school year, you have a few goals in mind:
- Introduce yourself & your course to students, giving them a clear picture of what to expect this year.
- Get to know the students you’ll be working with this year. This includes learning about them personally & getting an idea of their math experience they’re bringing into your classroom.
- Establish classroom routines & expectations.
Below you’ll find several low-prep activities you can use to help you reach these goals!
Get to Know Your Teacher Knockout Game
This Get to Know Your Teacher Knockout Game is a fun way for students to learn a little about you as a teacher. We’ve gotten great feedback from students and teachers that this game got their class engaged during those first days of school. It’s a great twist on our popular knockout review games and helps students get to know you.
To play this game, you just need to update the game template with your own answers. Then, use the projector to display questions and have students play this quick get to know the teacher game.
Playing this back to school knockout game not only helps students get an idea of who you are as a teacher, it’s also a fun way to introduce a learning strategy that you can use again and again throughout the year to review math. So the next time you play this game, the time for directions and explanation will be much shorter!
Get To Know Your Teacher Knockout Game:
- Purpose: Introduce yourself to your new students.
- Benefits:
- Helps students get a feel for you as a person.
- Begins conversations with students about themselves
- Low-stakes introduction to a learning activity you can do all year long.
Figure Me Out Math Activity
Figure Me Out Math Activity-This activity includes a paper version and a digital version. It gives students a chance to tell you or their classmates about themselves and do some math. They have to answer questions about themselves in math terms. This activity is a great way to get some insight into how students think mathematically.
Figure Me Out Math Activity
- Purpose: Have students introduce themselves.
- Benefits:
- Great warm-up for the school year.
- Informal way to gauge students’ mathematical thinking.
- Available in printable and digital formats.
Get Students Working Together with a Back To School Trivia Game
The Back to School Guesses and Wagers game is a great way to start off the school year. This game gets students estimating and defending their reasoning in a fun back-to-school trivia game. It’s great for the first week of school.
This game is played with the whole class with the trivia questions projected on a screen. Students work in teams to agree on a good estimate for the question.
Then, when all teams have decided on an estimate, those estimates are displayed in front of the class. Groups must then work together to place their “wagers” on which answers they believe are best. This is a great time to listen in to how students explain their thinking, how they work together, which students take the lead, etc.
When the correct answers are revealed, points are awarded as follows: 3 points for the team(s) providing the closest answer (without going over). Also, all of the teams that placed their wagers on that answer get the number of points they wagered.
One of the great things about this game is that there aren’t specific math skills required. Students in 6th-12th grade can enjoy this game, and it’s a valuable way to get to know them as mathematicians. It’s great for below grade level, on-grade, or advanced math classes.
This interactive trivia game is really a perfect activity to get students talking about numbers and math while having fun at the same time right from the beginning of the school year. Plus, there’s more opportunities to play Guesses and Wagers Trivia games throughout the year (Valentine’s Day, Pi Day, New Year’s, Halloween, Christmas, Animals Trivia, and more!)
Back to School Trivia Game:
- Purpose: Introduce students to class expectations for how to work together, and how to answer with mathematical reasoning.
- Benefits:
- This game is just plain fun.
- All students practice mathematical reasoning, justifying responses, and determining reasonableness.
- This math activity is not content specific, so students can show their thinking even if they aren’t as proficient with specific math concepts.
Student Inventories
Student Inventories-We have two digital student inventories included in this student inventories pack available here. One of the resources is for the first few days of school, and the other one is a check-in form that you can use throughout the year. Both of them are editable, so you can add questions if you want to.
Some questions on the beginning of the school year inventory include:
- What has your experience in math class been like in the past?
- I feel happiest when…
- One thing I want you to know about me is…
There’s also a quick check in form that can be used periodically throughout the school year.
Digital Student Inventory
- Purpose: To have students share important info with you at the beginning of the school year. Quick check ins for during the school year as well.
- Benefits:
- Helps you get to know your new students.
- Creates a spreadsheet record you can use and add to throughout the year
- Quick check-ins can help you take the temperature of your students throughout the school year.
Would You Rather Questions
Daily “Would You Rather?” Questions gives you a chance to connect with students in just a few moments a day. These are so fun! I’ve had multiple students express that these questions are their favorite part of the day. Crazy! They’re such a simple, low-prep way to get students into the classroom mode.
In this collection there are enough “Would You Rather” prompts to last all school year. It also comes with blank notes to make your own.
Would you Rather
- Purpose: To build classroom community throughout the school year.
- Benefits:
- Helps you get to know your new students.
- Can quickly be implemented
- Great class warm up.
Teach About Growth Mindset
The Growth Mindset Presentation and Escape Room give students a solid introduction to growth mindset. The growth mindset is a great concept to teach your students about at the beginning of the year. It’s a way to establish with students that they can learn math and get better at it in your class. You can cultivate your belief in them and they can cultivate their belief in their own ability to learn.
Teach about Growth Mindset
- Purpose: To help students understand how to foster a growth mindset in math class. This will help them better deal with challenging moments in math class, and understand that their brain is a muscle they can strengthen..
- Benefits:
- Helps establish class expectations of how to deal with difficulty, frustration and mistakes.
- Can be referenced throughout the school year.
Use Games to Review Procedures
While reviewing class rules and procedures is downright essential, it can be tempting to skip through it to get into the math. Or, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that just because you said something once and printed it in your syllabus, everyone should know what’s expected. It’s worth the time investment to really teach procedures so that the rest of the year runs smoothly. That means that, just like with new math concepts, there should be elements of practice, assessment and feedback.
One of my favorite ways to assess and reinforce class procedures is to use a game as an assessment tool. After practicing procedures with students, using a Kahoot game or Quizizz game (or other game platform) to “quiz” them on procedures is a fun way to reinforce them with students. Plus, you get to teach them how to do an activity that they’ll be doing throughout the year with new math concepts
Use Games to Review Procedures
- Purpose: To review class procedures and expectations with students.
- Benefits:
- Using games to review class procedures provides repetition in an engaging way.
- Helps students practice how games will be approached in your math classroom.
- A fun way to talk about what you’re going to have to talk about anyways!
Saving on Back to School
I hope that from one of these ideas and resources will lighten your load during the back to school season. Or, maybe something here sparks an idea for you.
If you want to get all of these resources then check out our Back to School Math Activities. You can get all of these activities and have a lot of options during this exciting time of back to school!
