The First Week of School: build a culture without wasting time
“It’s the first day of school. Teachers, put on your capes.” – Unknown
“No significant learning can occur without a significant relationship.” – James Corner
Many teachers take advantage of the first days of school to do one or more of the following undertakings related to classroom culture-building: ice-breakers, team-building, scavenger hunts, get-to-know-you games, and classroom rules and routines. These activities aim to ease anxiety, develop study habits, cultivate classroom culture, or establish procedures. I knew one colleague who would spend four full weeks on this. It was a significant sacrifice of instructional minutes in his math class. However, he enjoyed overwhelmingly positive relationships with students, he made the most of the remaining 160 school days, and he could push them to new heights.
I’ve also been at schools where “teach content on the first day” was the motto. This was a schoolwide initiative not to use instructional time for procedures and other fluff during the first week of school. With an emphasis on high stakes testing, it makes sense to take full advantage of the time you have with students. For better or worse, state testing is a necessary evil that isn’t going away anytime soon. Beginning in August, the days are numbered.
The need to tend to classroom culture collides with the need to dive right into content. Both perspectives have their merit, and they don’t necessarily have to be in opposition. There is a middle way. Take the get-to-know-you game “Four Corners” as a case in point. This game presents a question with four options, requiring students to go to one of four corners in the room to signify their answer. The idea is that students not only reveal things about themselves, but they also get to see classmates with common interests. Instead of just asking questions like, “What is your favorite flavor of ice cream: chocolate, vanilla, strawberry or mint?”, you could ask, “How do you like to learn: independently, in partners, in groups, or as a class?” In other words, culture-building games could incorporate questions that reveal learning modalities, cover classroom rules, identify your leaders, frontload curriculum, informally assess, or do anything else you need it to do.
Here are a few other ideas to blend culture-building and content. A scavenger hunt could require students to find items, locations and information in the classroom related to both content and to routines and procedures. Students could form teams to contribute to a list of classroom rules, or a competition between teams of students could quiz them on classroom expectations, both of which also allow you to guide and model your own expectations for student interaction. The first writing assignment could be about student strengths and weaknesses, about goals for their academic performance, about their favorite memories from the previous school year, or about their hopes, dreams and expectations for this year.
The key here is to be thoughtful about culture-building activities and do them with purpose or with multiple purposes. In the first days of school, not only can activities serve as culture-builders, they can also emphasize content and learning. Yes, a productive classroom culture is essential. Yes, instructional minutes are precious and should be used for teaching and learning. There are plenty of ways to accomplish both at the same time.
