12 Back to School Activities to Jumpstart Learning
Don’t you love New York in the fall? . . . It makes me want to buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address.
Joe Fox, You’ve Got Mail
Joe Fox, of You’ve Got Mail fame, nailed it. Nothing screams fall like a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils (you heard us, Pumpkin Spice Latte).
But what sometimes falls through the cracks is the awkward in-between period that follows that first day or first week. It feels too soon to dive into your first unit, but you’re ready to move past icebreakers and getting to know you activities. You need back-to-school activities that let you and your students ease into a new year, back-to-school activities that jumpstart the year’s learning without completely overwhelming brains still in summer mode.
Creating back-to-school activities that make that transition has been one of our fortes, especially after our first couple years in the classroom. As we’ve shared here before, we’re not super-big on icebreakers, and after a few years of trying to dive right in to new content only to discover our students had forgotten what a noun was (see Steph’s biggest first year mistake), we began to think of the first unit in our classes as a “boot camp” of sorts that teaches students the foundational skills they’ll need to be successful in our class.
While we’re constantly changing things up to fit new calendars, new curriculum maps, and new student needs, these back-to-school activities have been some of our favorites each year, probably because they prioritize engagement and student success. (Not that we don’t always prioritize those things, but at some point we’ve actually got to pick up a book and read or pick up a pencil and write!)
We’re sharing 12 back-to-school activities we’ve used over the years to successfully jumpstart learning, and since most of our career was divided between standard-level and PreAP/AP English courses, that’s how we’re splitting them up here. No matter what level of English you’re teaching this year, we’ve got back-to-school activities for you!
6 Engaging Back-to-School Activities for Standard-Level Classes
“See What You Know” Extra Credit Quiz
For many years, one of our first day of school activities was a short quiz about basic literary terms like simile, metaphor, and foreshadowing. We wrote sentences, using our own summers for inspiration, that required students to fill in the blank with the appropriate literary term from a word bank.
It helps fill the first day of class while indicating from Day 1 that this is a class where students are expected to work. It’s also a helpful indicator of our students’ prior knowledge coming into the year and which students will need extra help. And, of course, by making the quiz extra credit, we give students a little boost in the gradebook while lowering the stakes on our “pre-test.”
Parts of Speech Review
After Steph’s disastrous attempt to devote a full day of class to identifying types of phrases (as the first grammar lesson of the year, mind you), Kate helped her see that students need to start with the basics, even if they’ve learned them before.
Our first couple weeks of grammar (as a bellringer, not a full class period) became a review of the parts of speech, making sure all students have a basic understanding of the terminology they’ll need to master more challenging concepts throughout the year.
To liven up what can be a boring topic for many students, whether it’s because they already know the terms or grammar feels to them like calculus does to us, we like to use Schoolhouse Rock grammar videos to introduce each of the terms.
Some years, we watched all the videos during the first week of school; other years, we integrated them into our first grammar packet, with students completing practice activities after each video. If you have more advanced students, the first approach should work, but if, like us, you have many below-grade-level students, we recommend spacing it out with extra practice.
Summer Reading Activities (with a big caveat)
If your school still assigns summer reading (we know many schools have shifted away from this practice—ours did), it’s helpful to do a few activities related to the book. Ideally, this engages students with the text or prepares them for whatever form of assessment your school uses; some years, it’s just a way to communicate that yes, there was a purpose for that assignment.
Here’s the big caveat, though: in a standard-level class, it’s best to create these activities with the assumption that some (read: most) students probably didn’t read. You’ll be more successful if you create these activities in a way that focuses on themes, allowing students who did read to discuss the book without completely excluding students who didn’t (and, perhaps, convincing a couple students to actually pick up the book).
Another approach we’ve used is to pull quotations and passages from the book to review literary terms in our early units: this way, it pulls things together for students who did read while putting the text in front of those students who didn’t so they can still participate. Similarly, you might pull larger excerpts to use for close reading practice or as the basis for discussions.
Of course, if your school has assigned summer reading, there’s a time and place for holding students accountable for that reading. But if all your early activities are based on a text that many students didn’t read, you’re setting yourself and your students up for a frustrating start to the year.
Writing theme statements is a foundational skill that high school students will use throughout the year, and it’s a skill that students struggle with and that teachers interpret differently. We’re firm believers that a theme is a statement about a topic, not the topic itself, and we’ve learned that our students are more successful when we take time to set our expectations from the beginning.
We love using Pixar shorts for this because not only are they engaging (and beloved by students), but they tell a full story in just a few minutes. We’ve tried using excerpts from movies before, but without context, it’s sometimes hard to craft a meaningful theme statement.
After a review of the guidelines for an effective theme statement, we have students watch a series of shorts and practice identifying theme statements, first by selecting one from a list of choices and then by writing their own. It’s always a hit and saves us the headache of disastrous themes on their first literary analysis assignment.
Literary Device Mini-Lessons
Speaking of literary analysis, the first few weeks of school are a great time to review other important literary devices (perhaps ones your students struggled to identify on your first day extra credit quiz).
For many years, our first unit was a review of plot and character terms based on an episode of Modern Family. It was a fun way to ease into learning and review terms students should already know while still feeling like we were actually getting started on our curriculum.
How to Write a 5C Paragraph
We’re all about the 5C paragraph here at Three Heads (claim, concrete evidence, context, commentary, connection), and we’ve found teaching it to be a great way to start the year.
As our end goal, students write a 5C paragraph (with three pieces of evidence) identifying how Batman changes over the course of the movie and a theme this supports (naturally, we start with our Pixar shorts theme activity).
So, students watch the movie in three parts, and for each part, they complete a simple viewing guide that helps them to identify character traits they can use to describe Batman.
Then, we provide students with a structured sentence-by-sentence guide to craft a 5C paragraph describing Batman’s change. Their topic sentence identifies both his change and a theme statement it points to, the first set of concrete evidence-context-commentary explains what Batman is like at the beginning of the movie, the second set explains a turning point that causes him to change, and the third set explains what Batman is like at the end of the movie.
This is a really fun unit (for us and for students), but more importantly, it teaches skills we use throughout the entire year. And it is a meaningful writing assignment: many students have claimed that at 13 sentences, it was the longest thing they’d ever written (we wish they were being dramatic, but in some cases, we think it’s true).
We end the unit with a test on the movie. While it feels a little silly, we do spend a couple weeks working on the unit, and most students do well on the test, so it allows them to start the year with a good grade in their test/quiz category.
6 Essential Back-to-School Activities for PreAP and AP Classes
Our introductory boot camp for PreAP and AP classes is a bit more challenging and perhaps a little bit less fun than our introductory unit for our standard-level students, but we find it even more essential, as it ensures all students have the foundational knowledge they’ll need for successful literary analysis. (We do, by the way, use our Pixar shorts theme activity, described above, in these classes.)
We had two primary goals for this activity. First, we wanted students to begin to understand the difference between plot summary (what they literally observed in the painting) and interpretation (what the artist might be trying to highlight or accomplish with the painting).
Second, we wanted students to learn that they couldn’t just say things in AP Lit. Every claim they make has to be supported by evidence. So as we projected the images and encouraged students to tell us what was going on, we made a point of treating every claim with skepticism (even the fairly obvious ones), requiring students to use details from the painting to support their claims.
The activity is a lot of fun, but it also introduces core concepts and allows our students to get comfortable with our discussion-based format.
How to Punctuate, Cite, and Integrate Quotations Correctly
Using evidence correctly is key to success in a PreAP or AP English course, and we were determined that our students would leave our class knowing how to use textual evidence correctly.
The beginning of the year is a great time to do a mini-unit on punctuating, citing, and integrating quotations correctly. In our experience, it’s safe to assume that most students have gaps in their understanding of how to do this correctly, so starting the year with it not only makes your expectations clear, but it saves you from having to read disastrously integrated quotations for an entire semester before you lose your mind (just us?).
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How to Write a 5C Paragraph
Yep, we use this one with our PreAP and AP students as well. Sadly, we don’t use LEGO Batman (wouldn’t they love us if we did?), but we do teach them the format since we’ll be expecting them to use it in essays and short-answer responses throughout the year.
Many students have learned some strategy for packaging evidence and commentary, but not all students have, so it’s helpful to make it clear how you expect them to structure their paragraphs and ensure that everyone has this skill down.
Since we need to get moving quicker in these classes and students usually have some familiarity with the concepts, we usually introduce the 5C paragraph by having students write a character analysis based on one of our early texts (or even a close reading passage).
Building a Cultural & Literary Toolkit
We learned early on that many of our students lacked the cultural knowledge that is assumed in Western literature classes, particularly allusions from Greek and Roman mythology and the Bible. We started assigning students a list of common allusions to learn (after a few years, we created Kahoots we could assign to help them practice) before taking a test on them at the end of the first grading period.
This gives students at least a little bit more awareness of key allusions they’ll encounter throughout the year, and it’s especially important if you work in a diverse community where students may not have grown up hearing stories from Greek mythology or the Bible. While we prioritize adding diverse voices into our curriculum, we also believe we have a responsibility to level the playing field for our students as they prepare to enter college classrooms where Western cultural knowledge might be assumed.
As part of this “toolkit” process in AP Lit, we also started assigning Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor. We love how Foster’s very readable text unlocks the mysterious world of literary analysis by introducing students to common symbols in literature, and it, again, goes a long way toward leveling the playing field.
After years of boring old guided reading questions and quizzes, we added an escape room to help students understand the key concepts.
Modeling Regular Assignments
It probably took us a few too many years to start doing this, but after years of being frustrated by sub-par student work on early assignments, we started modeling how we expected students to complete key assignments like guided reading questions and our go-to flip book activity.
We feel a lot better about our tough grading when we’ve taken the time to make our expectations clear from the beginning, and it also allows most of our students to get off to a much stronger start.
Careful “First Novel” Selection
Because we’re trying to prepare our AP Lit students to write about a novel of their choice on the third Free-Response Question on the exam, we want to include as many novels and plays in our curriculum as we can (we’ve found five to be the most manageable).
This means we try to do about one “long” text per grading period, so students start working on one early in the year. It’s important to select this text carefully: you want one that is of appropriate rigor to allow for meaningful use on the exam, but you also don’t want to scare students off with your very first text.
We’ve found it most helpful to prioritize engagement in this book selection: we want a book that will challenge students but that feels “do-able” to them and that they will enjoy. August Wilson’s Fences and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road ended up being our best fits here (not together, but it’s always one of these). We save our more rigorous texts for later in the year (Pride and Prejudice and Macbeth for our second read and for our “first read back” from Winter Break).
First day of school activities are important, but so are the back-to-school activities that really jumpstart our students’ learning. We want them to know that our class is a safe space where they’ll be supported as they tackle new, challenging things, but we also want them to know our class is a place where learning happens. Planning your back-to-school activities carefully to communicate this to students and make sure everyone starts the first unit on a level playing field makes for a great start to the year for you and your students.
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