The first week of school can feel overwhelming, especially in a dual language or bilingual classroom. In this post, I will give you a simple 5-Day roadmap that will help you start the year with confidence.
Between meeting families, establishing routines, building relationships, and assessing students, it's easy to feel pressure to jump right into academics.
Here's the good news: The first week isn't about teaching everything. It's about creating a classroom community where students feel safe, welcomed, and ready to learn.
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Before Day 1: Host a Successful 'Meet the Teacher Night'
Before students even walk through your classroom door, you have an opportunity to build trust with families.
Use your Meet the Teacher or Open House time to:
- Introduce yourself and your teaching philosophy.
- Explain your dual language or bilingual program.
- Share important classroom procedures.
- Collect family information.
- Help students become familiar with the classroom environment
One of my favorite ways to welcome students is with a simple "I Have All Smarties" treat. It's an easy way to make students feel special and excited about the year ahead.
A welcoming Open House sets the tone for positive family communication throughout the year.
Day 1 of School: Build Connections and Create a Sense of Belonging + Introduce Your Expectations
In a nutshell, here's how I would bullet-point my Day-1:
- Introduce your morning meeting routine
- Include where and how you want kids to sit
- Be explicit about where their attention should be focused
- Introduce lining up procedures and expectations
- Practice lining up and walking the halls
- Take a tour of the school
- Be sure to meet the 'specials' teacher for the day and check out where the lunch room is at
- Classroom tour using 'line-walking' expectations
- Read the Ugly Duckling as your read-aloud
- Start one of the reading comprehension activities (save it for a hallway or bulletin board display of classwork)
- Give students their 'First Day of Kinder (or first grade) Certificate'
- Take a picture of each student
- Give some 'down time' for recess or an quiet table-top activity that all kids can enjoy like a cut & paste activity--better yet, quiet free play with play-dough at their desk.
Your first day needs to focus on helping students feel comfortable and connected.
Consider reading SEL-focused picture books such as:
- Chrysanthemum
- First Day Jitters
- The Kissing Hand
- The Ugly Duckling
These stories create opportunities for meaningful conversations about friendship, kindness, names, feelings, and belonging.
If you're looking for a bilingual option, The Ugly Duckling is one of my favorite stories for the first week of school. Students quickly connect with the themes of acceptance, friendship, and celebrating differences. Here is a small bundle to check out. It includes The Ugly Duckling illustrated story in Spanish and English along with extension activities for reading comprehension. It is great for dual language. There is also an interactive digital resource in this bundle that is focused on SEL, and is in Spanish.
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| Click on this image so that you can see this resource on TpT! |
Day 2 of School: Continue Building Community and Formally Introduce Expectations
Now that students are becoming more comfortable, continue strengthening classroom relationships.
Day 2 in a nutshell is:
- Review yesterday's
- morning meeting
- line-up expectations
- hall-walking expectations
- line up and walk to the lunch room or specials room for the review and practice
- Whole Group:
- review and re-read the Ugly Duckling
- work on one more of the reading comprehension activities
- Introduce your expectations by creating a class poster-contract
- Use this resource to sort rules as a class in a visual and understandable way.
- Once the poster is finished have kids sign it and put it up permanently on the wall in a highly visible spot
- Give kids the individual sort and reinforce the 'work quietly' expectation
- Introduce (slowly) your centers expectations
- Use an EASY, non-academic table-top activity like free-play dough time, building or pattern blocks, etc. Be sure the activity does not have any academic expectations at this point. Just focus on routines. Set up the same number of center spots or tables that you would for the year so that kids get the feel of the routine from the start.
- Routines for centers should include
- clean up your space
- stand up
- push in your chair
- stand behind your chair
- move to the next center on cue
- At first, all I have kids do is the above routine over and over and over until I am sure they get it
- Then I allow them to start to 'run' the activity
Day 3: Reinforce Expectations for the Classroom and for your Routines
Continue to review what kids know so far:
- Morning Meeting
- Line Up
- Walking in the Hallway
- Center Rotation Routine
Start to work longer at the actual center 'work' by first reviewing the routines, and then reinforce the volume that you expect for centers. If you plan to use centers for literacy and math, then I would space those out throughout the morning (literacy) and the afternoon for math.
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| Click on the image so that you can see this resource on TpT! |
This is a great day to incorporate the 'Patito Feo' Digital SEL activity as a whole group, and then lead into talking about classroom expectations and review what the class knows on this subject.
New Points for Day 3:
- Birthdays!
- Point out the 'Birthday Cake Wall' from the Back to School resource. Each cake is a month of the year
- Students will each get a candle to take home and decorate and write their name and birthdate on
- On day 4, place each candle on its respective cake!
- Whole Group
- Review and re-read the Patito Feo
- As a class, work through the digital set of interactive activities for SEL.
- Take advantage of this time to practice expectations for sitting on the rug (or your whole group work area)
- and for setting practice time for good listening skills
- Independent work
- Cut and Paste the characters and setting for Patito Feo
Days 4 & 5: Get Serious about Centers and Your Schedule
If you have not done so already, be sure to introduce your class schedule to the kids. Usually after the first 3 days of class, the ice is all broken, the kids feel more and more comfortable, and so do you. Routines are starting to feel like they belong, but you still need to drill those routines forming habits and skills.
My nut-shell points for days 4 & 5:
- Review expectations contract poster
- Practice lining up and walking the hallways
- Get as close to your actual schedule as possible by
- keeping the morning meeting/calendar time happening
- keep centers happening for now with non-academic 'work' (start with that on Monday of your first full week of school)
- If you plan to have centers in the afternoon for math, be sure to plug those in
- Start (if you haven't already) a whole group math lesson in the afternoon
- Introduce 'Reading for Pleasure' and your classroom library.
- Read Goldilocks and the Three Bears
- Discuss the 3 types of reading:
- read the pictures
- re-tell the story
- read the actual words
- Point out how the books relate to the porridge in Goldilocks' experience.
Wrapping It All Up:
Be sure to add in your own points each day. These are just a skeleton of how to get through that first week. You want to introduce rules ASAP, and if you can fit that all in on the first day, then go for it!
As you get a feel for the class, go for what you can do in a day. Plans always shift.
If you need a resource that is all inclusive for that Back to School rush, then check this out:
Gingham Classroom Decore
I love this red and white gingham! Plus this resource really has all you need: ABC posters in English and Spanish plus number posters. I'm giving you my PROVEN classroom rewards system, birthday cakes & candles, editable first day certificates and a welcome gift idea. PLUS a class schedule, job chart, classroom library labels and labels for classroom materials. Your room will be so cute and so organized with this system. This is perfect for the dual language cohesive feeling with color-coded everything so that you can set up your language spaces as well.
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I can confidently say that I absolutely love the above resource because it is so comprehensive. I love, love LOVE the rede and white gingham, and I can't recommend this resource enough! It goes perfectly with your back to school days!
