You wake up from a deep sleep and take a look at the clock. Terrified, you quickly realize you’ve overslept—and it’s the first day of school! You quickly get ready, then out the door you go to get to school as quickly as possible.
Once you’ve arrived, the realization that you aren’t ready for the first day of school hits. You have a class full of students waiting to meet their new teacher. It turns out that all the things you had prepared for your students don’t match up with the students you actually have in your class. You then realize that you don’t have lesson plans ready, nor do you have copies of activities ready to hand to students for a beginning of school activity. Overall, the first day so far has been a disaster and you are not prepared.
Then, you hear it: BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! Your alarm goes off, pulling you out of this dreadful nightmare as you thankfully realize you still have plenty of time to get ready for the first day—and you know everything is ready for your new students.
If you’re like me and many other educators this time of year, this type of dream has occurred more than once as our minds are getting geared up for the start of the new school year. So much energy and time goes into making sure you kick things off with a good start. It’s another year of new opportunities, challenges, and chances to build relationships with students.
Although the start of a new school year is a busy time and can be stressful, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Being an educator for over 23 years, it’s just a piece of the puzzle that eventually all comes together. Getting things ready to make an impact on the first day, the unknowns of who my students are and what they bring to the classroom, and the overall feeling of the first days of school are all part of the excitement.
Need some ideas to help you prepare for that first day? Check out this engaging back-to-school themed content:
August Calendar and Morning Meeting: Welcome back! Kick off the 2018–2019 school year with this calendar and morning meeting pack, which includes skill practice and reinforcement with the featured calendars, activities, attendance chart, and more.
Back to School Gallery Packs: Back by popular demand, this year's gallery packs are filled with everything you need to begin the new school year. You can choose from the array of completed lessons, or use the selection of lesson pages to easily create your own customized activities.
Lesson Renovation: Pocket Charts Galore!: This simple, interactive pocket chart is a great activity where students move letter cards to create CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) or CCVC and CVCC words. The lessons include sound recordings for each word so that students and teachers can hear the word before creating it.
Lesson Renovation: CVC Words: This lesson on short vowel words uses the CVC spelling pattern. This is a great resource to use with the MimioMobile™ collaboration app, as well as with multiple students working at the board!
How Do You Get To and From School?: In this simple yet effective activity, students build a graph demonstrating how they get to school each day. This is a great activity to include as part of a lesson on graphing!
If you enjoyed the above content, consider joining MimioConnect™, our interactive teaching community, to access more of our valuable lesson content and resources throughout the school year. Click here to register today!
Enhance Your Skills for Back to School
On top of getting everything in order for the first days back, you may also have various school initiatives to integrate into your classroom or curriculum. This could include new assessment programs, textbook adoption, technology initiatives such as 1:1 Chromebooks, or interactive teaching tools such as the MimioTeach™ interactive whiteboard or a ProColor interactive display.
You have limited time to spend learning about these at the beginning of the year—on top of getting everything else ready for your classroom. Unfortunately, lack of time in the education space is nothing new. We educators have a superpower of time management, and somehow find ways to get everything done so our students can have the best experience possible.
If you are fortunate enough to have any of the Boxlight Mimio tech tools or software, we have a range of training resources to help you maximize your time and hit the ground running. I work with a lot of schools that have a focus of increasing their use of Boxlight Mimio technology in the classroom. I like to recommend our flagship Quick Learn training program, which covers every aspect—and it’s all from a teacher’s perspective.
The Quick Learn sessions are offered each month either as a live webinar-based training session or as an on-demand recording. Expert teachers who use the technology and software in their classes are at the helm of each of these sessions. Each session provides a realistic approach to learning and integrating some great tech resources into your classroom, no matter your background. In addition, teachers have the opportunity to earn professional development certificates from each session, giving yet another benefit
The start of the school year is a great time to have a fresh commitment to changing things up and stepping outside the boundaries if you’re not too familiar with the tech tools you might have. As a teacher that might be new—or even one that needs a refresher—I like to suggest some training starting points.
Quick Learn sessions in August that should be part of your back to school preparations include:
- A Tour of MimioStudio: Quickly learn some of the basics of the MimioStudio™ classroom software, including tools that will change how you teach. Session available August 6 and 16 at 7:00pm ET.
- Mimio Goes Mobile: Got Chromebooks, iPads, Surface tablets, or any other device? Utilize resources you already have for student collaboration, interactive lessons, and assessment. Session available August 8 and 28 at 7:00pm ET.
- MimioStudio: Adding Content: Don’t reinvent the wheel—learn how to make the lessons you already have more interactive and powerful! Session available August 7 at 8:30pm ET and August 21 at 7:00pm ET.
- Putting Instructional Design to Work: See the big picture of how you can take a lesson and make it highly interactive using some easy tips and tools. Session available August 15 and 30 at 7:00pm ET.
Interested in checking out more of the Quick Learn sessions offered this month? Click here to view our complete list!
Education as a career is like no other. Each year, we have the opportunity for a fresh start, to try out new ideas that challenge both ourselves and our students, and to create new relationships with students whose impact may never be fully realized. Remember your reason for becoming a teacher and always reflect on the why. Have a great start to the new school year and continue to make a difference!
