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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.

Start With These Posts

  • Free First Week of School Plans
  • 5 Simple Back-To-School Activities That Make A BIG Impact
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SHOP MORE BACK-TO-SCHOOL RESOURCES ON AMAZON

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My Favorite Classroom Routines

  • One Word for Kids Goal Setting

    One Word Goal Setting for Kids: A Meaningful Back-to-School SEL Activity

  • book beads

    Book Beads: A Super Engaging Way to Celebrate Reading All Year

  • Download free Skill of the Day weeks for spiral review in reading, math, and language from Teaching with a Mountain View.

    FREE Skill of the Day Week

  • Weekly Letter Writing to Build Community

    Weekly Letter Writing to Build Community

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

  • Accomplishment Animals

    Accomplishment Animals: My FAVORITE Way to Celebrate Student Successes

  • These practical strategies and resources help you build a classroom that values connection, self-awareness, and emotional growth by naturally integrating SEL.

    Naturally Integrating SEL Into Your Classroom Routines

  • 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

  • One Word for Kids Goal Setting

    One Word Goal Setting for Kids: A Meaningful Back-to-School SEL Activity

  • These practical strategies and resources help you build a classroom that values connection, self-awareness, and emotional growth by naturally integrating SEL.

    Naturally Integrating SEL Into Your Classroom Routines

  • 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

  • Accomplishment Animals

    Accomplishment Animals: My FAVORITE Way to Celebrate Student Successes

  • 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
I’m obsessed with every single one of these fall b I’m obsessed with every single one of these fall books! 🍁 🎃 👻 They are all beautiful stories that kids actually love all while mastering the art of integrating important character education topics! Some stand alone wonderfully (Prunella, Little Ghost, Gustavo), while others provide AMAZING opportunities for paired texts (the leaf books and Millie Fleur) and character development and comparison. Comment below, and I’ll send you my FREE lessons I’ve designed to make these high-impact read alouds in your classroom! 🧡
🍂👻 The leaves are changing, so it’s the perfect ti 🍂👻 The leaves are changing, so it’s the perfect time to share THREE of my FAVORITE fall picture book lessons, and they are PACKED with meaningful reading comprehension skills and can be adapted for a huge range of grade levels. These are tried and true lessons that I’ve used in my classroom and absolutely LOVE! 🧡

🍂 Comment below, and I’ll send you the links to more info about all three lessons, including the FREE printable for the Leaf Peeps.

I LOVE pairing picture books that share similar themes, and I’ve come up with MANY different paired sets. It’s research-based and gives students opportunities to compare characters, analyze how different authors develop similar ideas, and make connections across texts—all while keeping fun, seasonal themes with authentic texts!

Here are the three lessons I’ve been LOVING over the past few years:

🍁 The Leaf Peeps: We read four adorable leaf-themed books and compare their topics, themes, and important life lessons. These books pair together extraordinarily well and work well anytime between now and Thanksgiving. BONUS: I have a FREE lesson guide and reflection for this one!

👻 Gustavo’s World: You can use any combo of these books, and the kids just love them. We explore character traits, character change, and theme with these sweet spooky stories. Then students create their own characters (with Play-Doh!) and imagine a new book for the collection!

🎃 Stand Out: We pair Millie Fleur’s Poison Garden, Beatrice Likes the Dark, and The Little Ghost Who Was a Quilt to explore what it means to stand out and embrace our differences. The discussions are SO good, and the lessons behind the books are so impactful!

These are the kinds of lessons I always LOVE most. Simple to prep, rich in discussion, and full of opportunities for students to think deeply about what they’re reading AND grow as little human beings. 💗
Picture books are one of my FAVORITE ways to teach Picture books are one of my FAVORITE ways to teach character development skills in upper elementary, and these are some of the very, very BEST! 📚❤️

Every week (and sometimes more often), I use a carefully selected picture book to help my students explore some big personal growth concepts! I incorporate books about everything from managing big emotions and navigating friendships to embracing differences, building confidence, and working through challenges. 🫶 

I love how a single picture book can lead to some of the most meaningful conversations we have all week!

I’ve rounded up several of my favorites, along with a specific learning objective for each one, so you can see exactly how I use them in my classroom.

And YES, picture books absolutely belong in upper elementary classrooms! 🥰

Which of these have you read with your students? Any favorites I need to add to my collection?
Can I tell you about one of my FAVORITE types of n Can I tell you about one of my FAVORITE types of novels to teach (I mean, if you know me, you know they are ALL my favorite, but this type is a ✨ students ✨ favorite — and not just while you’re teaching poetry)!📚🩷

🥁 Novels in verse! If you haven’t tried teaching one with your upper elementary kiddos yet, this is your sign.

I’ve found they’re the perfect way to get my readers to actually SLOW DOWN and pay close attention to the text — what’s said and what’s left unsaid. When there are only a handful of words on a page, every single word has a job to do. A line break changes everything. A word sitting all by itself on the page? Figurative phrases that tell more than an entire paragraph alone could? There’s a reason the author made every single choice. 

🌟 And for teaching inference? Oh my goodness. So much is left unsaid in these books. Truly, so much. My students have to piece together what a character is feeling from tiny details, and the conversations we have are AMAZING.

I just put together a whole blog post with everything I love about teaching them, my favorite titles for grades 4, 5, and 6+, and a giant list of annotation ideas you can use right away. 🎉 Comment below, and I’ll send the info your way!
Book beads ➡️ Book Lanyards ⭐️ No matter which one Book beads ➡️ Book Lanyards ⭐️ No matter which one you choose, your kids are going to love this reading celebration!! 🥰 

Comment below, and I’ll send you all the info or both options!
❇️ I have a few must-have anchor charts in my clas ❇️ I have a few must-have anchor charts in my classroom each year, and these are two of them! 🚨 BUT, I don’t just hang them up and go. It’s so important to spend time teaching my students how to use the prompts in their reading responses, how to develop their questions using each prompt, and discussing how to answer each type of prompt. 

Once students are familiar with how to use the prompts, they are able to have so much ownership over their reading response while also thinking critically about the book or chapter being discussed!

🎉🎉Comment below, and I’ll send you a link to three free sets of reading response resources and my favorite reading response task cards!
You won’t ever catch me in an ELA teaching positio You won’t ever catch me in an ELA teaching position where I’m not teaching word parts. 🩷💚 I believe wholeheartedly in the value of teaching morphology, especially in the upper grades! 

Comment below, and I’ll send you info on ALL my resources, including an entire FREE starter kit for teaching your students the basics of prefixes and suffixes!
🎉We start every math class the same: I read just a 🎉We start every math class the same: I read just a few of these mental math 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 answers in unison. It’s so quick, simple, and low stakes for kids. They increase in complexity throughout the year, and I’ve seen massive gains in my students’ mental math abilities.

Comment below, and I’ll send you the info! ❤️❤️
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Novels & Picture Books

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Anchor Charts

Anchor Charts

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Character Education

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