Back to School: Setting Up Classroom Rules and Routines

TPT is throwing their site wide Back to School Sale next week, so I thought I would round up some of my ideas for the first few days of school.

As a Core French teacher, one of my goals for the first few days of school is to begin the daunting task of learning over 120 students' names. I travel from class to class to teach a 45-60 minute lesson to five classes each day. Name tags can be a big help in the first few days of school. I would have students fold a piece of paper twice to form a triangle as a name tag. They can decorate their name tag on the front and on the back they can write 3-5 goals that they have for French class this term. Some goals might be to learn five new words each week, to write a journal entry every day, to attain a certain average grade in the class or to improve their reading level.

The first few days of school are crucial for setting up classroom routines and rules which are followed throughout the rest of the school year. I find it useful to write a poster of classroom rules with the class. They will offer suggestions for rules and I will help them write them in French on a bristol board.

This is a classroom behaviour agreement that was created with a grade 6 Core French class the first day of school. We discussed classroom rules and the students helped to pick out the five most important rules. They are: listening to and respecting others, being prepared for class, participating in class, raising your hand before speaking, and following the instructions. The class signed the behaviour agreement after.