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Back-to-School Resources

Get ready to start the school year with confidence! This page is packed with everything you need for a smooth and successful first week, including a free first-week lesson plans, must-read blog posts, and our best back-to-school resources. Whether you’re looking for inspiration, planning tools, or ready-to-use materials, we’ve got you covered! Explore now and set the stage for your best year yet.

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Enter your email to receive FREE lesson plans for your first week of school!

Enter your email to receive FREE lesson plans for your first week of school!

Classroom Prep

Here are my favorite smart classroom purchases that maximize the impact of every cent you have to spend as a teacher.

8 Types of Smart Classroom Purchases

These tips will help you minimize missing assignments and develop a time-saving system for organizing student work in upper elementary.

Tips for Organizing Student Work

Use this bundle to prepare upper elementary emergency sub plans. Also includes practical tips to help you prepare for a guest teacher.

Emergency Sub Plans and Guest Teacher Tips

These Amazon classroom favorites for teachers and students will make your teacher life easier and more organized!

Amazon Classroom Favorites

low prep resources upper elementary back to school prep

Low Prep Resources: Simple solutions that save time all year!

practical classroom decor tips upper elementary

Practical Classroom Decor Tips

Tips for organizing your upper elementary literacy block. Includes daily routines, whole group lessons, and literacy rotations.

Smooth Sailing Back to School Tips: Preparing for the New School Year

Prepping for the Academic Year

Simple upper elementary activities, lesson ideas, and book suggestions you can use to increase student engagement mid-year.

4 Easy Activities to Increase Student Engagement

Learn how to integrate daily grammar practice into your routines to save valuable time and strengthen grammar skills too.

6 Ways To Integrate Daily Grammar Practice Into Your Routines

Math tips and activities to start the year strong in upper elementary. Includes ideas for morning work, centers, and review.

Math Tips To Start The Year Strong

Literacy tips and activities to start the year strong in upper elementary. Includes ideas for morning work, centers, and review.

Literacy Tips To Start The Year Strong

Building Community

Learn how to build connections and student relationships with success stickers. These have quickly become one of my favorite traditions!

How To Build Connections and Student Relationships with Success Stickers

Incorporating Classroom Traditions to Build Classroom Community

Incorporating Classroom Traditions to Build Classroom Community

Weekly Letter Writing to Build Community

Weekly Letter Writing to Build Community

The First Few Weeks of School

FREE first day of school lesson plans: After many first days of school over the years, here are my tried and true tips for a successful first day of school. 

What To Teach On The First Day of School: FREE First Day of School Lesson Plans

5 back-to-school activities that have a BIG impact on student learning throughout the year. Learn to cultivate a growth mindset, community, and more.

5 Simple Back-To-School Activities That Make A BIG Impact

These sweet school-themed books are the perfect tools for this back to school reading lesson that introduces comparing texts and characters.

Back to School Reading Lesson

Best Back to School Picture Books

Best Back to School Picture Books

free first week of school lesson plans, back to school lesson plans

Free First Week of School Plans

Building Routines

If you’ve ever found yourself looking around your classroom in the morning and thinking things are a little chaotic, then this post of morning work activities is for you!

The Best Morning Work Activities

Working together is an important life skill that doesn’t always come naturally to our students. Here are my best tips for supporting group work.

Tips For Supporting Group Work and Collaboration

Upper elementary classroom management tips. Put these essential routines in place NOW for success all year.

Classroom Management Tips: Essential Daily Routines

My Three Must-Dos for Setting High Expectations in the Classroom

My Three Must-Dos for Setting High Expectations in the Classroom

The Best Back-to-School Resources

  • Back to School Growth Mindset Cover 5945833
  • back to school getting to know you task cards
  • Back to School Math By the Numbers Cover
  • School Inference Riddle TC Cover
  • COVER Road Trip Reading Project
  • Back to School Math Logic Puzzle COVER
  • back to school logic puzzles 1
  • Back to School Context Clues Activity Cover
  • back to school inference centers 1 1
  • readers theater back to school
  • find someone who back to school 1
📚 A new school year can bring some big emotions 📚 A new school year can bring some big emotions — and teachable moments, too! 💕❤️🩷 I have gathered some of my favorite books to incorporate into morning meeting and use as a model for these important skills. These read-alouds are PERFECT for those first weeks of school when you’re building your classroom community and helping students name, navigate, and normalize their feelings.

✨ I have also created book companions to go with several of these beautiful books! 📪 Drop a comment below, and I’ll send you info about the companions and a link to all the books in one spot. 

Which one would YOU start with? 📚👇

🩷My Secret Bully: Not all bullying is loud and obvious! This story helps students spot the quiet, hidden kind and build a kinder classroom.

🪴 The Rough Patch: Change can feel hard, but this gentle read shows how new beginnings can grow from challenging moments.

🍁 Sweep: A perfect reminder for the start of the year: don’t let little frustrations pile up into something big!

😳 The Whatifs: Turn those first day “what ifs” into excitement instead of worry! 

🌱 Sprout Branches Out: A sweet way to encourage students to try something new, even if it feels a little scary.

😌 Clovis Keeps His Cool: A relatable lesson in staying calm when things don’t go your way.

🐉 Dragons on the Inside: Big feelings can feel like dragons—this book helps kids name them and take control.

🧠 Invisible Things: Help students notice and talk about the feelings we can’t see but can definitely feel.

🌪️ I Am a Tornado: A lively reminder that our moods and actions can sweep others up, and it’s better to use our energy for good!
Year five in this space, and after a few days of P Year five in this space, and after a few days of PD mixed in with sporadic time for classroom set up, it’s starting to feel like my home away from home again. 💕 

Is it perfect? Nope. Is it a space that brings me and my students joy? Yep. Does a lot of learning and laughter happen in this space? So much. 🥹

That’s it. That’s what matters.
I will NEVER get over the fact that thousand of st I will NEVER get over the fact that thousand of students use these resources every day. 😭

🚨 🔔 Drop a comment below, and I’ll send you all the info, including FREE weeks of each! 

I started creating these resources when I couldn’t find anything that fit my needs. Most spiral reviews focused on WAY too many skills at a time and my students needed time to review very specific skills. While my goal is always to immerse my students in authentic texts and tasks, I found that starting every single day with a quick skill review to keep content-specific terms fresh in their minds and well practiced was a GAME CHANGER! ✍️ 📖 

 Whether you use the journal format, digital version, or full-page version, it’s accessible and available for grades 2-3 or 4-5 (which offers great options for differentiation!). 🤩

#classroom #teacher #teachergram #teach #backtoschool #iteach #teachersofinstagram
Grab yours FREE and implement it during one of you Grab yours FREE and implement it during one of your first few days of school! 💕📕 Comment below, and I will send it your way.

By getting kids up and moving from the very first moment, you have an opportunity to authentically teach routines and expectations, AND they have a chance to shake some of their  first day jitters out. As a bonus, they’ll start to learn so much about each other and feel the warmth and community of your classroom. ❤️
🚨 💯 Drop a comment below to incorporate thes 🚨 💯 Drop a comment below to incorporate these mental math tasks into your daily instruction!! 👏 It truly takes just a minute or two out of your day… it’s that easy and oh, so important to improving mental math. 

🎉 Here’s how I start every math class: I read these cards orally, step by step, and when I’m done, I count down from three silently using my fingers. When my students see a closed fist, they share their answer in unison — or on a dry erase board. My students LOVE it, and it’s so easy to implement. I see HUGE impacts within the first couple of weeks! Win/win/win! 😍😍

👀 Why mental math?

🧠Increases Self-Confidence
🧠Increase Number Sense and Manipulation of Numbers
🧠Real-World Relevance
🧠Develops Math Fact Automaticity 
🧠Helps build conceptual understanding
🧠Keeps the brain sharp
🧠Taps into different learning modalities 

Need a link? Drop a comment, and I’ll send it your way!

#iteach #iteachtoo #teacher #backtoschool #iteachmath #mathteacher #teachersofinstagram
OBSESSED with these books for teaching important e OBSESSED with these books for teaching important expectations and character building at the beginning of the year!! Swipe to see the books and their themes. Comment below if you’d like the list AND links to resource guides to accompany several of them! 🥰😍
I learned about weekly letter writing while studen I learned about weekly letter writing while student teaching 17 years ago, and I’ve done it ever since. It brings me SO much joy to read the responses! ❤️ 

✨ Drop a comment below, and I’ll send you a FREE getting started guide and a link to prewritten letter templates for the whole year! ✍️ 

Here are the details:

🌟 Each full week of school, I write a letter to my students (each student gets the same letter)… In it, I talk about interesting things in my life, what we are going to learn about and do that week, a character trait we’re focusing on, any interesting dates or celebrations that week, and then I always ask them a question or give them a relevant prompt (or two) to respond. 

They drop it in my mailbox any time throughout the week, and  I write short responses back to them (directly on their letters) each week. 

‼️ It’s the only homework I give, and it’s my FAVORITE. I love reading their responses and learning so much about them. ❤️❤️

#teacher #backtoschool #iteachtoo #teachersofinstagram #iteach #firstweekofschool
🥔 😀 I’ve been doing Mr. Potato Head Observ 🥔 😀 I’ve been doing Mr. Potato Head Observations during the first week of school FOREVER, but with the popularity of potatoes these days (humans are random lol), I’m taking it up a notch this year. Here is my plan for using our creations throughout the first week! 

🌟 Guaranteed engagement and all you need are some old Mr. Potato Head parts! Check your local thrift shops, garage sales, and Buy Nothing groups!

Here are the lesson details:

👀 Science: This is the OG lesson!! It’s a great science lesson to teach students about the importance of excellent observations and creating detailed diagrams. Drop a comment, and I’ll send you a link to my FREE First Week Plans that have all the details or you can hear me chat about it under my “Engagement” tab on stories! 

✍️ Writing: Write a story about your potato creations! This is a great way to start seeing some of your students’ writing in a super low pressure environment. You could also do a round robin collaborative story verbally!

📕 Reading: The Couch Potato Connection! Read The Couch Potato, then have them draw their own All About Me version of themselves as potatoes. Maybe they’re the Soccer Potato or the Cheer Potato or the Book Potato! Bonus: If you’re ready to start content, discuss character traits and development!

❤️ Positive Potato Signs: I’m going to have my students create Positive Potato signs and leave one of our potatoes up all year while rotating the positive messages!
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