It’s that time of year – a mixture of enthusiasm and anticipation transforms into action as educators begin planning for the academic year and prepare to welcome students back. While exciting, it can be easy to become overwhelmed with jumpstarting the school year on an impressive note. Teachers balance numerous responsibilities like learning students’ names, establishing routines, and setting the stage for a successful academic year.
While this may seem daunting, Seesaw provides easy-to-use tools that will immediately enhance classroom community and instruction. In this blog post, we will focus on three classroom routines that can be easily integrated–all of which require minimal effort and are ready for implementation! There is no need to reinvent the wheel. The only thing needed to get started is an account. Whether you are new to Seesaw or could use a refresher, our objective is to be a guide in seamlessly integrating these ideas into the classroom right away.
Setting Your Classroom Up For Success With Seesaw’s Routines For Back To School
The Seesaw Library makes it easy to establish effective routines immediately. The following three routines for back-to-school are sure to ignite engagement, enhance collaboration, and set a solid foundation for an enriching school year:
COMMUNITY BUILDERS
Community builders are essential for the beginning of the school year and beyond. They create a space that celebrates students’ interests, nurturing a sense of belonging. Educators can use social icebreakers and community builders to create a welcoming learning environment where students can thrive. Ideas to continue using community builders throughout the year include Fun Fridays, before collaborative projects, and when a new student joins!
Seesaw offers a collection of ready-to-go icebreakers and community builders that promote inclusivity and connection. These tools are instrumental in fostering a positive atmosphere in the classroom, making them an essential classroom routine that teachers and students will love. Find engaging, ready-to-present community builders inside of Seesaw and take one thing off the back-to-school to-do list.
Getting Started:
In these lessons, students watch a video modeling the activity and discuss the activity before trying it with their teacher’s guidance:
COLLABORATIVE PROTOCOLS
Collaborative Protocols build active listeners and communicators, allowing students to hear and explore diverse points of view while building trust in the classroom. One of the most essential parts of collaborative protocols is providing structured, positive, and respectful peer-to-peer communication.
To support this process, Seesaw has created a library of ready-to-use activities! Each activity shows students how to participate with each protocol through student-led modeling videos successfully. Students can analyze the protocol and ask questions before participating in the activity themselves, building more confidence in the routine. Each collaborative protocol has an instructional video where our Seesaw Stars model the protocol. Make Collaborative Protocols a powerful and engaging routine by introducing a new protocol every few weeks to slowly build a repository of strategies for your students to use and showing videos when students need a reminder on how to share their ideas and listen to others.
Getting Started:
In these lessons, students watch a video of the collaborative protocol and discuss the strategy before giving it a try!
WHOLE-CLASS READING WITH DIGITAL BOOKS
Read-alouds are a powerful and engaging routine to establish in elementary classrooms at the beginning of the school year. They cultivate a lifelong love for reading, enhance reading fluency, and enrich vocabulary. Here are some tips for teachers on how to use digital books:
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Use digital books for whole-class reading time
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Click play to listen to the book being read aloud fluently, or read the book together to practice print concepts
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Model for students how to interact with the text using Seesaw creative tools
All books come with digital text and an audio version. There are several options on how to present the book to students. Educators can use the present-to-class to access Seesaw’s creative tools to annotate, identify sight words, discuss story elements, and more! It is helpful to pause every couple of pages and discuss with the class.
Getting Started:
In these lessons, students read the fictional text as a class or independently while stopping to make predictions, ask questions, focus on key story elements, or apply other reading strategies:
Want To See These Routines In Action?
Check out this informative video that outlines these routines and guides how to immediately implement these strategies in the classroom. By promoting these routines and leveraging the content in Seesaw’s library, educators can jumpstart the school year with a bang and create a classroom full of excited explorers!
