Back to School is a busy time and it feels like there is SO much to cover right out of the get go. So what should you do the first week? If you are debating first week lessons, here’s six things you should do the first week of school.
1. Teach Growth Mindset
Some students want to be PERFECT. Take out the stress of needing to be perfect and stress that music is fun and growth. This is particularly important if you are dealing performing ensembles. As students repeat things or practice a task, try to take out words like “perfect” and include phrases such as “You worked very hard! How did you feel about that?” or “I can hear your hard work. That showed a lot of growth”. These are hard changes to adapt but it WILL help. Some students shut down if they can’t be “perfect”.
Start addressing it now. It doesn’t need to be a big conversation but a simple try your best, or remind students that progress is more important than perfect.
2. Teach the big deal important rules
This is a great time to go over your big expectations about safe behavior such as hands to themselves, kind words, etc. You can always go over them in more detail in the next few weeks but touch on them briefly. Students who have first day anxiety may not remember everything or if there is information overload from seeing new faces, new procedures in their classrooms, or other specials teachers so it’s important to retouch all of these in the next few weeks.
3. Teach the most important procedures
Things like fire drills, lock downs, using the bathroom procedures and important safety things are what should be taught this week. There are always more procedures that will need to be taught but the first week make sure you take care of the emergency related things. Check out more procedures that you may want to include here. Like rules, make sure you review these quickly by having students remind their classmates. “Who can tell me what we do for a fire drill?” This is better as a whole class activity so you can catch it if something is told incorrectly.
4. Make music
Music isn’t just talking. Make sure you play an easy game, sing a song with hand motions they can follow or copy, or start teaching music they’ll need to know soon.
5. Get to Know You Activities!
Especially if you have younger students or high turnover, make sure you take time to play get to know you games and activities that will inform you on your students’ backgrounds. Here’s a few ideas:
Name Games: These not only help you and other students learn each others’ names but also help alleviate some of the first day nerves. Check out this post for some name games to play.
Books about Names: This post has a list of books with names. It’s a great idea to make sure your students know THEIR name and pronouncing it correctly are both important!
Student Surveys: These students surveys are a great way for you to get info from students about their musical backgrounds! Includes variations for younger and older students.
6. Assess
I know. As part of your survey, get that baseline for your student growth goal. Depending on how involved it needs to be it may not work the first week of school but it should be within the first few classes. If it’s a quick written assessment of 5-10 key concepts you want them to know, this is an easy activity to give the first week while they are doing surveys as well. Giving students this and a survey at the same time takes some of the pressure off!
I hope this has given you a few ideas for the first week!
