Emily 0:36

Hey there. Thanks for joining us today. In today's episode, we're discussing the three lists you need to plan the first week of school, and sharing a tip for a gift you can give your future self. You know, we love to do that.

Heidi 0:50

We start our episodes with a morning message, just like we used to do at morning meeting in our classrooms. This week's morning message is a little different. We asked if anyone had tried that AFMAT electric pencil sharpener, and we asked what they thought about it.

Emily 1:05

And this is not an ad. It's just, I have seen it everywhere because it's so darn cute and it looks like a robot. It's very cute. And then you put the pencil in and it just, like, sharpens it itself, like, like a robot, yeah.

Heidi 1:18

And then it just pops up like a toast out of the toaster.

Emily 1:20

I know. So I just like wanted to know if this thing was legit. And guess what, guys, it is. Because even though we haven't used it yet, everyone who responded gave it a glowing review. So now, sitting in my Amazon cart, I just have to pull the trigger.

Emily 1:34

So Lisa says it's the best sharpener she's ever had, and she says that she loves that it has an automatic stop so kids can't grind their pencils down to nothing. So nice. Joy says, The pencils get super sharp and it's so fast.

Emily 1:49

Stephanie says, literally, the best pencil sharpener ever. I bought two. The battery is rechargeable, so you can unplug it and use it for a while, which makes it very convenient. I have passed it down my rows and give all the students a chance to sharpen their pencils. It saves them from getting up, and takes away some of the novelty of it.

Heidi 2:06

That is so handy to have a rechargeable one, because that means your pencil sharpening situation station doesn't have to be located next to a plug. You could put it where it's most convenient to have your pencils.

Emily 2:17

Yeah, as long as you remember to charge it. It could be one of the kids jobs at the end of the day. You know, plug like, go plug in the charger. Yeah, Julie and Nicole both say they put cute little googly eyes on theirs, which makes me want mine even more.

Heidi 2:29

It's so like, it's just perfect. It already has such personality.

Emily 2:33

So I need to get it. Don't you think? Absolutely, we have to test it out in person.

Heidi 2:37

You've got three kids going back to school. You're gonna need pencils.

Emily 2:39

Absolutely. And I need to be able to give you guys my own personal review. So listen in the future to hear if this gets extra credit or not.

Heidi 2:47

Maybe that's a business expense.

Emily 2:49

There we go. I like the way you think. The write offs.

Heidi 2:53

And we will link to this in the show notes if you want to check it out for yourself.

Emily 2:57

So if you've used this sharpener, we'd love to hear your review. Come join the conversation in our teacher approved Facebook group.

Heidi 3:03

One of the topics we love to talk about is how to use the first days of school as a launch pad for a successful school year.

Emily 3:12

It's easy to just fill those first few days with random activities, or to skip the time filling all together and just jump right into content, because you don't know what else to do.

Heidi 3:22

But that's not really helping anyone. Instead of starting the school year by keeping kids busy, let's start the year by making an impact.

Emily 3:30

That's what we're going to do today, and not just the first day. Let's plan on an impactful first week.

Heidi 3:37

Or whenever it is that you're ready to start teaching your regular units. Your first week may not actually be five days. If you start school on a Wednesday, your first week might only be three days.

Emily 3:48

Yeah, my kids school is starting on a Thursday for the second time in a row, and Thursday and Friday are both early out days. Oh, fun. So not normal days at all. But you may only have to plan two days your first week. Maybe you're going to use the following Monday as part of your first week plans as well if you are in that situation.

Heidi 4:07

As we go through the episode, when we say first week, just remember that you're measuring that week with your heart and not the calendar. Yes, your first week is whatever you are considering it to be.

Emily 4:19

Yeah, and ideally, I think at least four days would be good before transitioning out of first week mode. But that's just my preference. Your mileage may vary.

Heidi 4:31

However you define your first week, you still need a plan for those days, and we promise we can keep this process from being overwhelming. In fact, you could start with just three lists.

Emily 4:43

We're playing a little fast and loose with the definition of a list, because the first list you need is your schedule.

Heidi 4:49

A schedule is totally a list. It's a list of times.

Emily 4:53

Okay, true. You're going to start with your list of times, or as you might. Call it your schedule. One of the advantages of being an established teacher is that you've probably got a good handle on your regular daily schedule. But no matter how long you've taught, the first days of school send us all back to square one.

Heidi 5:13

Because our kids are starting new, it means we're starting new too. We can't plop these kids down in the middle of a regular school day, they just don't know how to function yet. So we have to meet them where they are and gently nudge them in the direction we want them to go.

Emily 5:28

And we can't herd them in the right direction if we don't know which direction they should be going. So the first schedule you need isn't for your first day of school. The first schedule you need is for a regular day of school.

Heidi 5:39

We walk you through all the nitty gritty details of scheduled crafting in episode 140 so go check that out if you want some guidance there. Then once you have your regular schedule, we're going to adapt it for the first day.

Emily 5:52

To start with, we need to get down to the bare bones. Pretend this is a home renovation show. We are taking this baby down to the studs. No more popcorn ceilings for us.

Heidi 6:04

Do you have to take popcorn ceilings down to the studs? I don't know now.

Emily 6:08

I don't know if, if they're in the ceiling, are they called studs? I don't know, but that's right.

Heidi 6:13

It's all right.

Emily 6:13

That's why we don't do home renovation. But in this case, the studs are the fixed events in your schedule. These are the things that you don't get to control. Think lunchtime, recess, specialty classes, mandated intervention time, all that good stuff.

Heidi 6:29

And the fixed events in your first day of school schedule are probably pretty similar to the fixed events in your regular daily schedule, so that makes them easy to identify. Then with our fixed events listed, we can add our hinge events.

Emily 6:43

We talk a lot about this in episode 140 if you have questions. But the gist is that hinge events are what the success of your fixed events hinge on. In order for your class to go to a fixed event like lunch or recess, what do they need to know to be successful in advance?

Heidi 7:00

On the first day, you need a comfortable cushion of time for your hinge events before and after each fixed event. If you teach first or second grade, you might want 20 to 30 minutes before lunch to teach all of the necessary procedures, and maybe even five or 10 minutes after lunch to solve any issues that cropped up during lunchtime.

Emily 7:22

Older grades might not need as much time for their hinge events, but it's better to err on the side of too much time planned than not enough. Don't assume that your students know what to do, because there are always a few who don't know, don't remember, or don't care.

Heidi 7:37

As you progress through your first week, your hinge events can get shorter. On the second day of school, you might only need 20 minutes for lunchtime prep, and that window can get shorter every day until you're down to the 10 minutes it normally takes to get everyone ready to go.

Emily 7:51

By now, you've got your fixed events listed and your hinge events listed, but there are probably quite a few holes in your day still, so let's figure out What to do with those times.

Heidi 8:01

This is where your second list comes in. You need a list of your goals and a collection of activities you could do to meet those goals.

Emily 8:09

So you knew ATTABOY was coming, right? We're talking about back to school. ATTABOY stands for your goals of affirming, training, teaching and assessing at the beginning of the year.

Heidi 8:23

If you have our readiness checklist or our first day of school planning guide, we have ATTABOY lists already made, all you have to do is add your own goals. If you don't have either of those resources yet, check the show notes for links that will take you right to them.

Emily 8:37

For each of those four areas you want a bank of activity ideas to draw from. We shared lots of ideas for affirming in Episode 73 and 148 so go back and check those out if you need some ideas of specific examples.

Emily 8:50

But basically, affirming activities are anything you do to create a positive feeling in your classroom. That includes whatever you do to introduce yourself, build classroom community, get to know your students and help your students get to know each other.

Heidi 9:04

Affirming activities are my favorite part of back to school. They're the fun stuff. So they're the find somebody who bingo game and collaborative art projects and the first day time capsules. All of that falls under the umbrella of affirming.

Emily 9:19

Your goals for training are all about your procedures and expectations. So add to your list all of the procedures you need to teach and all of the school tools you need to introduce, organize each item by how important it is. So for example, your attention signal is more important than your procedure for checking out recess equipment and how to take care of pencils is more important than how to take care of calculators.

Heidi 9:43

Listing your procedures and expectations in order from most to least important will help make sure that you're setting your kids up to be successful and independent.

Emily 9:52

Now when it comes to your goal for teaching, you might be itching to jump into your first units, and you can add those to your goals list. But there are a few things you might need to teach first.

For my goals for teaching, I started by introducing any academic routines we used in the class. For example, my second graders did a word sort every day. Because I wanted the focus to be on the process and not the content, the first week, I gave everyone the same super simple picture sort. I didn't care how well they could sort the rhyming pictures. I wanted to teach them how to efficiently cut out their sort, how to store it, how to use their word study notebook, and then the procedures for the different source that we would use during the year.

And you can apply that same concept to any of your instructional routines that you need to teach. Make the content so simple that your students don't need to think about it, so that they're free to focus on mastering the process.

Yeah, this will work with math games, Learning Center, spelling practice, number of day, online activities, vocabulary cards, establishing silent reading time, journal time, and really, any other academic routine that you need students to do independently.

Add all of that to your teaching list, and then it's time for assessing. You've probably got some mandated assessments waiting to go. Add them to your assessing goal list, but hopefully you're allowed to hold off on those for a couple of days. Instead, use the first few days of school for some informal assessments.

Right. You want to know who struggles to get things finished, or who is overwhelmed by any of the content, especially when you're keeping the content so simple.

That is a big red flag to be on the lookout for. If you're in the early days of school and you're keeping your content easy, but you have kids who are still struggling, that tells you, right away, you need to dial into whatever's going on there.

You also want to be watching for kids who are struggling to work as a team, maybe kids who wander at recess instead of engaging with friends, kids who sit alone at lunch. All of these are important assessments, even if you're not submitting any forms to your principal.

Add formal and informal assessments to your assessment goal list. Then start using these ATTABOY goals to fill in the gaps in your schedule.

On the first day we recommend starting the very first day with a calming activity like pattern blocks.

And we have a brand new set of first day arrival activities that are first day of school Lego mats if you don't want to use pattern blocks. Both of those resources are linked in the show notes. I think you're going to love them.

So we've got a great plan for starting the very first day. How are you going to start the second day?

First we have the fixed event of kids arriving, and then you add the hinge events of everything that needs to happen in the morning: eating breakfast, unpacking a backpack, getting a chair. All of that setting up has to happen in the morning. The kids aren't there ahead of time to prep them for what to do.

Because there's so much to do in the morning, I made sure to teach that routine on the afternoon of the first day. That gave us lots of time to tell try tally, talk our procedures, without the craziness of kids arriving at different times and needing different things. Then on the morning of the second day, I have the steps listed on the board for reference, but I also make sure I'm present and engaged in directing them to their next steps.

If you don't have the chance to teach your arrival procedures on the first day, I would recommend planning a second morning of a simple time filler activity. If you've introduced crayons to your students, you could even have something as easy as a coloring page, and then I would schedule a good chunk of time later in the day to teach your arrival procedures for the third day of school.

There are just so many things that have to happen in the morning that you'll wear yourself out if you try to introduce them in the moment that they need to happen for real. It's much easier to teach at another time.

Once we've got the morning routine out of the way and we've planned some hinge event, time to discuss how it went and troubleshoot any issues that cropped up. Take a look at your ATTABOY goals to decide what to do next.

We recommend mixing things up. So if you've just done a lot of procedure stuff, switch gears with something from your affirming list.

The pattern of teach a procedure, do an activity, teach a procedure, do an activity is a good one to keep in mind throughout the whole first week of school.

Also keep working through that list of procedures and school tools, review anything that isn't sticking, and introduce your less frequent procedures, like going to an assembly and how to be responsible with the stapler.

Oh the good old stapler. And check out our Guided Discovery lessons if you want some already done for your resources, for introducing your school tools, there is a link to that in our show notes.

That's one of my favorite back to school things that we have. As your list of procedures to teach gets shorter, start looking at your teaching list, what learning routines do you want to get in place?

This is another time when knowing your regular classroom schedule is helpful. We want to get kids settled into the daily routine as quickly as possible. One way to start doing this is to teach your subjects at the time that you would normally teach them.

With my second graders, we did math after morning recess, so that's a good time to do math, even if it's not a regular math lesson. On the second and third days of school, math time looked like learning how to take care of math manipulatives, and I scheduled that during our regular math time.

With my second graders at 1:30 I would gather the class to listen to a story, because on a normal school day, that's when they would do their reading time. After the story, I had them get the books that I had put in their cubby and learn how to choose a reading spot, and then we started the long process of building on task stamina.

I'd hang out at my reading table, since that's where I would normally be during reading time, and pretend to be busy while I set a timer and secretly watched what the kids were doing. As soon as I saw one of the kids start looking around, I gathered everyone back for a discussion. Now, this isn't meant as any kind of punishment, it's just getting a baseline. Okay, everyone we just read for two minutes and 16 seconds. That is so good, but I bet we could try it again and get to three whole minutes.

The tricky part about scheduling all the procedure lessons and hinge events and introducing routines is that you have no way of knowing how long they will take to teach. Do you need a five minute reading time or a 25 minute reading time? Oh, man, if your kids could read 25 minutes on task at the start of the year, that would be sweet.

I want to hear about that. That would be absolute heaven. But even though 25 minutes is a long shot, you really can't predict how long anything will take. That's how you need to plan for things to take twice as long as normal, but prepare like your students will finish in half the time.

And that's where our third list comes in. You need a list of time filler activities. Time fillers are anything that can keep kids engaged for a few minutes. Maybe it's a silly action song, like my aunt came back, or it's an eight minute video. You just need an assortment of activities that you can turn to in a moment's notice.

In our first day of school planning guide and in the ready for school checklists, we have a time filler activity list just waiting for you to add your content. There are six categories of easy activities, books to read aloud, movement activities, songs and so on. Fill this list with as many ideas as you can think of.

Next to each activity, write an estimate for how long it will take. If you find yourself with five extra minutes, you want to be able to identify a five minute activity in a hurry.

And now that we've got our schedule, made a list of activities to meet our ATTABOY goals and a list of time fillers, can you guess what we're going to do with them? We're going to write a script.

And this isn't a script like enter stage, write teacher, greet students. It's more like writing sub plans for yourself.

Planning the first week of school requires so much detailed thought that it's just too hard to try and carry it all in your head. Do yourself a favor and write it all down on paper. Our first day of school planning guide even has blank scripts that you can fill out for the whole first week. For each activity, you can record all of the details you need to remember and have a list of materials you need.

If you want more information about scripts, go back to Episode 145 where we break it down in detail.

So there are the three lists you need to plan your first week of school. Start with your schedule list. Make a list of your back to school goals and list all your time filler activities. Put them all together in a script and hey, your first week is all set.

Now what are your favorite first week activities? Come and share about them in the teacher approved Facebook group.

Now let's talk about this week's teacher approved tip. Each week we leave you with a small actionable tip that you can apply in your classroom today. This week's teacher approved tip is remind yourself now what you can do in May. Tell us about this, Heidi.

We have had this podcast long enough now that I can say this is your annual reminder. Since the third year, we've been able to give this reminder. As you are preparing for back to school, make a note of the tasks that you're doing, and pay special attention to things that could be done ahead of time.

For example, if you like, to have each kid in your class make a 3D all about me booklet, make a note to make copies and cut ribbons ahead of time. Then you need to send that list into the future somehow, maybe send yourself an email and schedule it to arrive in the middle of May. Or schedule a reminder on your phone to prompt you to check the to do list that you made in the Notes app.

Find some way to make sure that this list gets to you near the end of the next school year. Then, if the tasks are still relevant to your plans, use your resources to get things checked off that list. If you have parent volunteers, you can have them cut out shapes, or you could ask instructional aids to make copies if they need projects to stay busy during testing.

You may also want to keep a list of the materials you're using first as you set up your room. That way, you can plan what to put in your need first box when you're packing up your room next spring.

And again, make sure that that list comes into your life at the time when you need to reference it. You tell yourself you remember, but life is so crazy that nine months from now, you will forget that you even made a list, much less where that list is. So make it easy to get ahead and schedule the reminder now.

We love giving a gift to our future selves around here and doing something today that can benefit your life a year from now, is definitely a gold medal move in planning ahead.

To wrap up the show, we are sharing what we're giving extra credit to this week. Emily, what gets your extra credit?

I'm giving extra credit to the book Summer Romance by Annabel Monahan. It's about professional organizer Allie, whose own life is a bit of a mess, of course, despite her career choice, but all that changes one day when she meets Ethan at the dog park. I really hate giving descriptions of books that I'm recommending because they always sound so lame.

And I never read a description before I pick a book anyway, I'm going on vibes when I pick a book, I never read the description, but I don't know how else to recommend a book without least giving you a little bit of a description. So just trust me, it's cute, it's fun. It's the perfect light summer read.

Well, everyone needs that in August.

What are you giving extra credit to Heidi?

Well, my extra credit goes to my headphone stand. I normally would just put my headphones propped up on my microphone, but I got a new desk recently, and I wanted it to look neat and tidy. And I wasn't sure how much a headphone stand would actually contribute to the tidy looking of the desk, but I'm surprised that it really does make a difference.

The one I got is just a piece of curved wood, but it looks really pretty. It does the job, and it was affordable, so I'm pretty happy with it. I will link to it in the show notes in case you need a headphone stand too.

I do need a headphone stand. And every time I come to your house, I'm like, Oh, that looks so nice.

Yeah, well that you go. Now you have a link.

That's it for today's episode. Prepare your schedule, prepare your goals list and prepare your time filler list to help you plan the first week of school.

And don't forget this week's teacher approved tip to remind your future self to start preparing for next back to school.

If you enjoyed this episode, would you mind leaving us a five star rating? Ratings and reviews help our podcast reach new listeners, and they are a big help to us.