The first few days of school. A lot rides on them. There’s pressure to set up your expectations and class culture on the right note and many experts and seasoned teachers say that how you start the school year is an integral indicator of how the rest of the school year will play out. I was told when I first started teaching “how you start is how you’ll finish,” “don’t smile till Christmas” and “you need fun ice breaker games” among so many other pieces of well-meaning advice. An effective back to school activity is imperative to starting off on the right track. This back to school SMART goal activity allows you to get to know the students and is different to the usual ice-breaker games.
Back to School Challenges
There are so many back to school activities out there making it challenging to search through and find an appropriate match to you as a teacher. Unfortunately, this could lead to an overwhelming start to the school year – not ideal.
Starting a school year on the tail end of a pandemic doesn’t help matters. This school year is even more challenging due to many students still dealing with the repercussions of transitioning from distance learning to in-person lessons.
Students will be feeling a blizzard of emotions and the flexibility and resilience of a growth mindset have never been more important to help them weather this storm.
Back to School Growth Mindset Reflection
Teaching essential but ‘soft’ skills such as the ability to accurately reflect, self-assess and set goals are often overlooked by curriculum demands so the start of the year is a perfect time to teach these key skills. You and your students are not bogged down in assessments, set texts, and homework assignments, and are fresh after the summer break.
I have found in ‘normal’ times that reflection and goal-setting are key to a successful start to the year, but right now if you can help students reflect on last year and set focused goals for this upcoming year, they will feel more equipped to deal positively with what is to come. This back to school SMART goal activity does just that!
Self-reflection Growth Mindset Survey
So how do you set your classroom culture right? How do you get the right balance of rules, expectations, and engagement? There are many strategies for setting up expectations. This one focuses on a great ice breaker activity. It’s more than just a quick game taking only fifteen minutes and pairs a ‘straight into academics and learning’ mentality with reflection and engagement.
You can find the full resource here, and this post talks through how to use it in detail. The first step is reflection. Ask students to reflect on their behaviour and learning in English last school year. There are editable surveys in the resource so you can tailor yours to skills in your subject or even behaviour points during the distance learning. It would be a good starting point to discuss how expectations and learning differed from studying in the classroom. It is handy to reinforce the importance of honesty when self-reflecting and stating that students don’t have to share their answers (this will increase the likelihood of accurate reflection).
Teaching SMART goals
Students will move through the surveys at different paces, so it is always important to have a challenging activity ready for students who finish first. For the behaviour survey, you can ask students to rank the behaviours in order of importance and impact on learning. When they have completed the skills survey, you could ask them to identify the skill they feel most confident with and their weakest in your subject and consider possible reasons for their conclusions.
Next is talking through SMART goals. SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based targets. So, instead of “I want to be good at English” which is a vague and general goal that many students would produce if you asked them to write goals without any structure, “I will read two books a month for six months to improve my fluency and vocabulary in English” is immediately more concrete – the student has something tangible to aim for. There is a purpose for the goal (to improve English) and a measurable outcome – after six months you can ask yourself, did I read two books a month?
Back to School Letter-Writing Activity
In this activity, students write a letter to themselves outlining three goals for the school year (I ask them to construct two subject-specific and one can be personal). They seal the letter in an envelope, address it to themselves and I then collect the letter. I store the letters until the end of the year and distribute them in the last week of the school year. Students can and should use their surveys to structure their three targets.
I always read an example letter that I wrote, which can help students get to know me and I can teach the structure and organisation of a letter. As I read my example, I have students highlight the specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based aspects of my goals. We discuss my letter and they draft their own. I collect in the draft and give students feedback, using the opportunity as an informal writing diagnostic to assess students’ writing skills and a chance to get to know new students. This is totally optional and will depend on your time and schedule etc.
Students tend to enjoy opening their letters from their past selves and at that point, they can assess their targets and check whether they met their goals. It is a fun way of goal setting – students enjoy the process, you can get to know them by reading their letters and you have a back to school activity which usually lasts at least the first couple of lessons, is appropriately academic, and encompasses those soft skills that can often be overlooked once the busyness of the school year sets in.
Check out the resource here. I would love to see your students engaging with this activity in the classroom. Feel free to post pictures and tag me on Instagram.
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Thank you and enjoy 
