Digital Activities for the First Week of School

The beginning of the 2020 school year is filled with unknowns. Even the types of our first week back-to-school activities are in question. What can we do with our students if they're being asked to stay at home through remote learning or socially distance in a classroom? 

Here are some ideas to get you started as you plan for the first week of a new, and very different, school year:

1. Kahoot or Quizlet Live - whether you and your students are physically in the classroom or you find yourself in a virtual classroom on the first week of school, Kahoot or Quizlet Live is a great option. Create your own game to review the classroom rules and procedures or review content that your students learned last year. Here's an article from Kahoot about how to host your own game remotely on Zoom, Microsoft Teams and more.

2. Charades - after teaching students your classroom rules and procedures, ask them to play a game of charades with their group members in class or their virtual classroom. See if other students can guess which correct rule or procedure they're acting out!

3. Online Student Survey - Take your favorite parent and student surveys and go digital! Use Google Forms or Microsoft Forms to gather information about your class to help guide your communication and instruction throughout the year.

4. Create custom Zoom or Microsoft Teams backgrounds - Ask your students to use PowerPoint or Google Slides to design their own custom (school appropriate) background to use in their virtual classroom! It's a fun way to personalize their learning experience and make for interesting conversations during the first week of school. Here's a free set of backgrounds I made just for you to download from Teachers Pay Teachers. :)

5. Pre-Test - Create a non-graded assessment for your students to take during the first or second week of school. While a pre-test might not be the most fun activity, it will allow you to understand your students' strengths and weaknesses and give them the opportunity to preview your tests in a low-stakes environment. I find this works best with secondary students. It takes the "scare factor" out of their first real assessment in my class at a later date.

6. Website Scavenger Hunt - our class websites are more important than ever this year. Create a virtual scavenger hunt (or one on paper, if you feel comfortable) and ask your students to seek the answers on your website! They'll be pros at navigating your site in no time.

7. Email Rock Stars - Teach your students how to send an email. This skill was not an area I have focused on in past years, but it will definitely be one of the first skills my students learn this year! To help them practice, I plan to send frequent emails to their student accounts to help them form a habit of checking their emails on a regular basis.

8. Digital Back to School Activities - I had so much fun creating 14 digital activities to use whether I'm in the classroom or teaching remotely this fall. The pages are on Google Slides but you can easily download them as PowerPoint files from within the Google Slides program. Check out the resource here!

It includes:

1. Student Survey

2. My Favorite Things

3. Goal Setting Activity

4. Top 5 Memories

5. All the Feels (Emoji Activity)

6. Classmate Bingo

7. Student (Peer) Interview

8. My Learning Style

9. The Techie Tip Sheet

10. Fact or Fiction?

11. Letter to My Future Self

12. I'm Ready - a writing activity to review the classroom policies and procedues

13. Selfie Scrapbook

14. Questions for the Teacher

Have you thought of any other fun activities to welcome students back to school in a remote or socially distanced environment?

Share those ideas in the comments section!

Happy Teaching!