Getting ready for back to school can be overwhelming. It can be hard to know what to prioritize, what to reuse, and what to create. Unless you kept good notes from last year, it can be hard to remember what worked well, what needed a minor tweak, and what needed a complete overhaul. (And, to be honest, the notes I do leave for myself are always half-baked.)
After more than a decade of back to school, I’ve developed a sixth sense for what to prioritize during this tricky time of year. I hope to save you some sweat and time. That’s why I want to share these 12 fun, effortless back-to-school freebies!
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Goal Setting Freebies
Each year, I like to begin by asking students to set some goals for the year ahead. Oftentimes, I use back-to-school stations, and I make each of these its own station. Goal setting is valuable for student metacognition, but it’s also valuable for teachers as we get to know our students’ interest, strengths, and struggles.
First, this is such an easy goal-setting graphic organizer. Since I often times teach underclassmen, this graphic organizer asks students to set goals related to reading, writing, and behavior. For me, that behavior goal always provides insight into students’ minds and helps me get a feel of what classroom management style will best suit my students.
Similarly, students often struggle to gauge their own grammar skills. For one thing, there are so many grammar skills that matter, and grammar, perhaps more than other parts of ELA, is heavy with domain-specific vocabulary. For this reason, I value the insights provided by this free Grammar Inventory. Since it’s a Google Form, I can easily adjust questions from year to year and keep data across years so I can look for trends.
Back-to-School Freebies for Writing
In the ELA classroom, back-to-school writing samples are key. The English classroom is always a writing classroom, and I want to communicate that expectation from day one. However, I also don’t want to scare students right off the bat, so I look for some low-stakes but meaningful writing opportunities.
First, visual writing prompts are a fun way to engage student writers. These images and prompts are back-to-school freebies that lend themselves to creative writing. How students choose to shape their response to these visual prompts is often telling, but it is also so fun. As a bonus, students are often comfortable sharing these responses, which helps build classroom community.
While the visual writing prompts are fun back-to-school freebies, this free rubric for teaching email etiquette is practical. Over the course of a school year, teachers and students oftentimes communicate via email. For this reason, it’s helpful to teach email etiquette early on. No one wants to receive an email with everything crammed into the subject line. This free email etiquette rubric makes it easy for teachers to quickly and easily communicate email expectations with students.
Fun Back-to-School Freebies
During the school year, I prevent students from lining up at the door through a combination of exit tickets and sponge activities. However, both of those strategies work best with content, and the first few days of school may be light on content. For that reason, I like to use these fun back-to-school freebies:
First, I am a big fan of task cards. The flexibility and variety of this Task Cards Sampler gives teachers a snapshot of student skills. Plus, teachers can mix and match cards to assess a variety of skills. When you’re content light at the beginning of the year, task cards can be a nearly effortless exit ticket or sponge activity.
However, sometimes you want to target a specific skill rather than a variety of skills. In that case, these are the back-to-school freebies for you: 7 Paragraph Sorts or Sentence Types Card Sort. Both of these decks incorporate meaningful classroom movement while focusing on a specific skill. I also like to use these sets at the beginning of the year because students are usually familiar with these topics, so this acts as a review or a diagnostic.
Of course, each teacher has her own goals for back to school. The task cards and card sorts that worked for my students may not work for you. For this reason, I wanted to share this free task card template. Teachers simply decide whether they want to create task cards or a card game, fill in the blanks, print, shuffle, and play!
My Favorite Back-to-School Freebies
Up to this point, I’ve focused on sharing back-to-school freebies focused on content knowledge. However, my favorite back-to-school freebies are organizational rather than content-oriented.
First, updating my Sub Cover Sheet is a must-do. This is one of the first tasks I check off my list at the beginning of the year. Once this is updated, I always feel a little more secure in case something unexpected keeps me from coming into school. I value this Sub Cover Sheet so much I wrote an entire blog post about it.
Second, I also feel better once my back-to-school gifts are ready to go. I scour social media for cutsy, punny sayings to put on back-to-school gifts. I hand these out to students and families during Open House or Meet the Teacher. I also have students deliver them to support staff throughout the building. I have collected some of these cute sayings in these free gift tags.
For building support staff, a quick gift or thank-you card is a great way to open up lines of communication. Similarly, I always want to start the year by opening up communication with parents and families. To do this, I refresh this free Parent Contact Log each year. Since this is a Google Form, it’s easy to keep the data in case you have a student (or their sibling) multiple times. I also find myself looking back in my parent content log to make sure I’m being consistent.
Finally, I prepare my Very Basic Daily Agenda Slides. Of the back-to-school freebies on this list, this is the one I use the most because I use it every day all school year. Over the years, I have found that a simple, focused Daily Agenda keeps me (and my students) from being too distracted.
