The first week of school is filled with things we need to teach.
How do we feel about starting school?
Who are the important people in our school?
What are our classroom rules and expectations?
Who is our teacher?
Who are the new friends sitting beside us?
All of these conversations are important—but they don’t have to become one more thing to squeeze into an already packed first-week schedule.
Instead, why not teach them through something you’re already planning to do every day?
Literacy.
That is the idea behind my Back to School Literacy & Comprehension Bundle.
Rather than stopping your literacy block to “do” a separate getting-to-know-you activity, rules lesson, school tour, or discussion about first-day emotions, this bundle uses children’s literature as the starting point for those conversations.
Students are still listening to quality read-alouds.
They’re still predicting, discussing characters, building vocabulary, sequencing, retelling, making text-to-self connections, writing, and practicing word work.
But while they’re doing it, they’re also learning how to be part of their new classroom community.
And THAT is exactly what we need during the first week of school!
Day 1: Let’s Talk About First-Day Feelings
The first day brings ALL the emotions.
Some children walk through the door bursting with excitement. Others are nervous, quiet, unsure, or missing home.
First Day, Hooray! by Nancy Poydar gives us a wonderful way to begin talking about those feelings through literature.
Students can discuss how the characters feel, make predictions, identify characters and school helpers, explore their new school, and make connections between the story and their own first-day experiences.
Instead of simply asking, “How are you feeling today?” we’re examining emotions through a character and then bringing that thinking back to ourselves.
That’s literacy and an important first-day conversation.
The resource also introduces the people who help make a school run each day—such as the teacher, principal, custodian, and bus driver—giving you a natural transition into meeting the support staff in your own building.
Day 2: Let’s Talk About Rules
Next comes one of those conversations every teacher needs to have during the first week:
RULES!
But instead of beginning with a long teacher talk about what students can and cannot do, let a story help you get there.
Froggy Goes to School by Jonathan London opens the door to conversations about school behavior, classroom expectations, feelings, and what happens when we make different choices.
Students aren’t just memorizing a list of rules. They’re thinking about characters, discussing events, making text-to-self connections, and considering how those ideas apply to their own classroom.
At the same time, they’re working on literacy skills such as vocabulary, syllables, ABC order, comprehension, and writing.
Your rules discussion becomes part of your literacy instruction—not something you need to fit in afterward.
Day 3: Let’s Get to Know Each Other
One of our biggest goals during the first week is building relationships.
Students need to know their teacher, but we also need opportunities to begin learning about each child.
A Letter From Your Teacher on the First Day of School provides a beautiful springboard for both.
Students make predictions, learn about their teacher, share information about themselves, and even write a letter back to their teacher.
Think about how much you can learn from those early conversations and writing samples!
At the same time, students are beginning to understand something very important:
This is our classroom. We are going to learn together, and we are going to get to know and care about one another.
That’s classroom community built right into literacy time.
Day 4: Let’s Have Some Back-to-School Fun!
By this point, students are beginning to settle in, so it’s a perfect time for some school-themed literacy fun with There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed Some Books! by Lucille Colandro.
School supplies provide the familiar back-to-school connection while students work on sequencing, retelling, writing, word work, and other beginning-of-the-year skills.
It’s engaging and fun, but it still has a purpose.
And that’s really the heart of this entire bundle.
You’re Not ADDING More to Your First Week
This is what I want teachers to understand most about this resource:
You are not adding another activity to your day.
You already have a literacy block.
You already read aloud to your students.
You already need to begin introducing comprehension, vocabulary, writing, word work, and classroom routines.
So let’s use that time to accomplish some of the other important work of the first week, too.
Through four familiar back-to-school read-alouds, students can explore first-day emotions, school helpers, classroom rules, their teacher, their classmates, school supplies, and their new classroom community while practicing meaningful literacy skills.
Your Literacy Block Can Help Build Your Classroom Community
Across the four days, the bundle includes lesson plans and choices for read-aloud discussions, vocabulary, comprehension, story elements, sequencing and retelling, text-to-self connections, word work, ABC order, syllables, making words, writing, mini-books, hands-on activities, math, and more. Differentiated choices allow teachers to select what works best for their students.
You don’t need to complete every activity.
Choose what fits your class.
Use the read-aloud as your anchor, select the literacy activities that meet your students’ needs, and allow the theme of the story to guide those important first-week conversations.
By the end of the week, you haven’t just “done” back-to-school activities.
You’ve begun teaching students how to listen, discuss, comprehend, write, work together, follow expectations, and become members of a classroom community.
And you’ve done it during a part of the day that was already there.
That’s what makes this one of my favorite ways to begin the school year.
Ready to plan your first week?
Take a closer look at the Back to School Literacy & Comprehension Bundle on Teachers Pay Teachers
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