The beginning of the school year is a time to reintroduce students to routine, classroom procedures, and the habits of homework and studying…. but I don’t need to tell you that! For us as English teachers, the beginning of the school year means reviewing and reteaching skills that our students will SWEAR they were NOT taught “last year.” We know the joke; we know that isn’t true!
But what that does communicate to us as teachers is that students need some review and reteaching. I like to think of the first two weeks or so of the school year as “boot camp.” Yes, it’s a time to get to know each other and establish a classroom community, but it is equally as important to find out what students remember, what they know, and what they need to review.
So, here are three necessary lessons for the beginning of the school year in English Language Arts. (side note: My school district just changed ELA to RLA, which stands for Reading Language Arts— has this happened at your school?)
Each one of these lessons is accompanied by a FREE RESOURCE that you can use to get you started.
Growth Mindset
The beginning of the school year is an excellent time to remind students about a growth mindset and then use this lesson as a springboard to set goals for the school year.
Here is a quick and easy lesson to get students thinking about growth mindset.
The Procedure
Break students into groups. Give students a poster or piece of butcher paper and markers.
Ask groups: “What is a growth mindset?” Create a poster that answers this question. Use words, quotes, images, and symbols to represent your group’s answer to this question.
Groups share their posters with the class. Alternatively, students can create an infographic using Canva.com and share them electronically on a platform such as Google Classroom.
Finally, give students the goal setting form to fill out. You can find this FREE RESOURCE in the Freebie Library here at BespokeClassroom.com. If you are already a subscriber, you can log in here. If you need to subscribe, click here.
Annotations + Close Reading
Chances are, that our students have not been actively reading during the summer break months. There may be exceptions to this rule, but overall, most students will not have annotated a text or “close read” a text over the summer. Annotating a text is habitual when it’s done as a common practice, and students need to begin reviewing this practice from the very beginning of the school year. I think of the beginning of the school year as a time for recalibration of habits for students.
In order to review annotations and close reading, here is a quick review lesson to get your students started.
The Procedure
Break students into groups and give them a short text— either a short poem or passage. This exercise works best when groups work with the same text.
Have students annotate the text.
Then, have students project or show their group annotations to the whole class and discuss what they annotated.
Afterwords, have students create an anchor chart about how to annotate a text. You can follow that up with a handout like this FREE one: Annotations for Any Text. You can find a FREE copy in the Freebie Library here on the blog.
Check out this FREE ANNOTATION GUIDE in the Free Resource Library here on the blog to get your started with reviewing close reading.
Diagnostic Essay & Paragraph Format
For this lesson, students will complete a diagnostic writing assignment aimed at assessing student understanding of paragraph format, which should shed light on a students’ understanding of essay writing— but in miniature. By giving your students a diagnostic paragraph writing assignment, you will be able to quickly assess targeted skills such as: topic sentences, evidence, commentary, transitions, vocabulary, grammar, and more.
Here is a quick and easy-to-implement paragraph diagnostic assignment to use with your students. Students can complete this assignment as individuals or in groups.
The Procedure
Students should write a paragraph based on the same prompt in order to facilitate the sharing of writing in a common context.
You can opt to give students a simple agree/disagree prompt such as: Do you agree or disagree that students should be allowed to choose between online education or in-person education? Then, give students time to discuss the topic and time to write the paragraph.
After students turn in their paragraphs, show examples of strong thesis statements, supporting details, explanations, concluding sentences, grammatical elements, etc. Students will be proud of their work if/when their work is selected to be shared with the entire class.
Check out this other FREE idea as a writing diagnostic at the beginning of the year that is highly engaging for students. The prompt for this activity is to write the absolutely WORST essay of your entire life….. and then reflect back upon the rules you “broke” in order to jumpstart a conversation about what quality academic writing should look like. Find this freebie here and a blog post about it here.
What else would you add to this list? Please leave a comment below. I’d love to hear from you :)
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About the Author
Meredith is the founder and creator of TeachWriting.org and Bespoke ELA. She has taught high school English for 10+ years in Dallas, Chicago, and New York City and holds a M.A. in Literature from Northwestern University. She has always had a connection to the written word-- through songwriting, screenplay writing, and essay writing-- and she enjoys the process of teaching students how to express their ideas. Meredith enjoys life with her sweet daughter and Yorkie.