Back to school is a special time of year. Sure, it means the end of summer break, but it’s also a time for new beginnings. It’s a time to get back into the regular cadence of the school schedule.
This is a crucial time of year for setting expectations — for students, for teachers, for everyone in the school setting.
It’s a time to set routine — to get some repetitions with how the class will run day by day, week by week.
And, of course, it’s relationship-building time! We want to get to know our students. They want to know more about us. And they need to get to know each other to build the classroom community.
Below we have curated over 80 back to school activities for any classroom. Scroll down for tons of ready-to-use lessons along with tutorials, templates, and examples to make planning this year a little easier.
What are your back to school ideas? Please share them in a comment at the bottom of the post!
80 back to school activities for any classroom
Click on any picture below to jump directly to that section or use the drop down menu to browse the table of contents.
First week of school activities
Animate from audio challenge from Adobe Express
In this back to school creative challenge, students share about themselves using the Animate from Audio feature in Adobe Express.
Interactive scavenger hunt
Using Flippity’s scavenger hunt template and easy to follow instructions you can create your own customized interactive scavenger hunt.
Try out this demo to see what your scavenger hunt could look like.
Back to school reflection
Encourage reflection right from the beginning of the school year with a look back at the past year and ahead to the next with MirrorTalkAI.
- Objective Prompt:Reflect on the past school year and your hopes and dreams for the future school year.
- Customize Reflection Focus: Motivation
Learn more in our new post Build meaningful reflection into class in minutes with Mirror Talk
Top 3 About Me!
Your students have probably seen those YouTube videos with a ranked top 10 list. YouTubers rank all sorts of things, from destinations to tech gear to food. It’s a great cognitive exercise — pick a topic, identify criteria, rank them, and justify your rankings. Using a simple graphic organizer in Book Creator — or a page per item with images, text, videos, and more — can be a great way for students to make their case for their rankings. A simple way to start is a little top 3 list, but a bigger top 10 list can help students dive more deeply into a topic.
Template: Top 3 Graphic Organizer
More info: How to create a YouTube-style top 10 videos
Google Classroom banner quilt.
Give each student a square blank Google Drawing and have them decorate it. Download each square and put them together to make a “quilt” or collage Google Classroom banner. Alternatively you can have each student add their name to a collaborative Google Drawing Classroom banner by making the file “anyone with link can edit” and asking students to add their name using word art. Don’t forget to revisit this activity when any new students join your class.
Share your Hopes and Dreams for the year.
Start the year off by having students share their hopes and dreams. This HyperDoc is a great one to share at the beginning of the year then go back at the end of the year and read what you wrote!
Hopes and Dreams HyperDoc created by Rachel Marker and Karly Moura
My Back to School Book
A great Book Creator template book to use with your students. Give them the means to introduce themselves to you and their classmates while helping them learn how to use Book Creator in a fun way.
Back to School with Shapegrams
Learn and practice Google Drawings skills with interactive tutorials from Tony Vincent. The first 4 shapegrams are FREE to download and use with your students. Thirty-five dollars gets you 365 days of membership privileges, which includes access to all Shapegrams and a license to distribute them to students. Two new Shapegrams are added per month (August through May).
Learn more about Shapegrams
Get Shapegrams
Google Slides “About Me” presentation.
In this applied digital skills lesson students pick a topic and share information about it by creating an interactive presentation. The example presentation walks them through sharing about themselves and things they care about. This is the perfect way to introduce creating their own Google Slides presentation. Later they can use the same lesson but present on a topic they have learned about in class.
About a Topic Google Applied Digital Skills lesson
Check out Google Applied Digital Skills: 5 reasons why you should try this FREE curriculum for more lessons and ideas.
Design your own locker
Students can design a locker to introduce themselves to classmates in this fun template. They simply copy items from the other slides in the template to add to their lockers. Then they can explain why those items are important to them and represent them.
Tell it with emojis
Let your students summarize what they did during their summer break using only emojis! If you have new students, you can also let them introduce themselves using emojis with this Tell it with Emojis activity from BookWidgets.
Code your name and animate it!
Don’t wait until December to introduce your students to coding. In this FREE interactive Google CS first lesson students add their name and bring the letters to life through animation, sound, and music through programming.
CS First Animate A Name project
First Days of School
This First Days of School Book Creator book by Kelly Hilton is full of resources and ideas inspired by the book The First Days of School by Harry Wong.
Tech Tool Introductions and Refreshers
Get to know Kami
Help your students get to know Kami with these exciting activities introducing the Kami tools. Familiarize yourself with the most popular tools in Kami – Text box, Drawing Tool and Text Comment.
Book Creator tutorial for students
Join Ruby as she guides you through the essentials of using Book Creator. In this YouTube tutorial, you’ll learn how to sign in, copy a book, and create your very own book.
Google Docs tutorials for students
Learn how to use Google Docs including how to edit and format a document. You’ll also learn about tools and settings.
Gmail tutorial for students
Learn the basic components of Gmail to help you send and receive emails.
Google Drive tutorial for students
Learn to organize, manage, and share files in Drive.
Google Slides tutorials for students
Learn presentation themes, text, and transitions using Google Slides. You’ll also learn how to add photos, images, videos, and shapes to a presentation and how to add tables, diagrams, and charts, and share your presentation.
Google Sheets tutorials for students
Learn how to use Google Sheets including how to edit and format a sheet, how to evaluate and interpret data, and advanced functions and conditional formatting.
