Want Free? Back to School Resources--all FREE!

Well lookie there, school is about to start (or has started for some of you.) I cannot believe the summer has flown by so quickly. I wanted to hop on here and share a few COMPLETELY FREE resources for the first few weeks back to school.

The weeks of starting back are hectic, crazy, expensive and oh so much fun! So grab these free resources to help make planning easier, learning engaging, and maybe hang on to your sanity a bit longer. :)

First, I love these Beginning of the Year Agreements from PYP in Paradise. 

All you need is chart paper and post-its. I personally love to fancy up my walls a bit with the Chevron Chart Paper from Amazon, but the other stuff works great too!

Have the students write down things they expect from you as a teacher. I also have mine do this as students as well. We do the teacher one first then the student one second. It is great for building community. It is free. It is engaging!

Another activity I love involves candy. If your school does not allow this, you can do pom-poms or some other colored object. 

This is extremely fun for the kids the whole "sharing about yourself" thing a lot easier on the teacher. Now for this, you would need to buy candy (which is why I say, you can totally substitute this for something else that you already have.) I have even passed out crayons! It works great! 

I write this on an anchor chart on the board and then we go around sharing! I usually try to make sure all of the kids have one of each color. If not, that is okay too. Depends on how much time you have to share!

Miss Decarbo has an amazing activity that you can grab for free as well! Simply click HERE and look at the PREVIEW of the resource. The PREVIEW can be downloaded and has the Magic Dough instructions and recipe for FREE. She did this on purpose, I promise. :) I encourage you to buy the WHOLE resource because it is amazing. 

But I promised FREE, so you can just grab this recipe for free. I did this with my 3rd and 5th graders....they loved it. Never too old for things like this. Also, we wrote about it. The kids really enjoyed making this. 

I also think it is important to start understanding your students. I always do this Reading Interest Inventory with my students. 

It is fun for the students to think about the different things they like (and dislike) about reading. I always emphasize being honest. Sometimes they want so badly to please us that they don't tell us how they really feel. This is especially true at the beginning of the year. I talk to them about my likes and dislikes with reading. This seems to help the students be more honest. 

I think we have all done this before but I have created free tags for the bag activity. I love this All About Me activity. All you need are brown paper bags and this free tag. I did share a Teacher Tip on Instagram last night though. I always have one of these made about me for the first day of school. I find it is the easiest way to explain it, it eases nerves and is a great conversation started with the kids! 

These are made to fit the bag even though they are bigger in the picture below. 

Lastly (because I could go on forever...) if you don't follow Jennifer Findley, she is great! I love using this free resource full of back to school (or first few weeks of school...because...life happens) activities. 

They are really great for multiple ages and my students are always so engaged when using these! 

I really hope these tips have been helpful! If you have a free resource in your shop for back to school...drop the link in the comments below! Sharing is caring! 

Happy Teaching!

Hillary

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