What Should You Teach the First Week of School?
Steal my plan for Building Community and Classroom Routines
If you teach secondary students, you know the feeling.
School starts Monday, and somewhere in your inbox is a pacing guide that suggests you should be teaching actual curriculum by Tuesday.
Meanwhile, you’re still trying to figure out who is sitting where, who needs a pencil, who goes by a name different from the one on your roster, and whether your students even know what they’re supposed to do when the bell rings.
So, should you really be teaching math yet? Honestly, I don’t think you need to.
I know. That sounds a little crazy when we already have so much content to cover. But after years of teaching middle and high school math, I’ve become pretty convinced that the first week of school is some of the most important teaching we do all year, and a lot of it has very little to do with our curriculum.
For me, there are two big goals for the first week:
- Build a classroom community where students feel welcomed, known, and comfortable.
- Teach the procedures and routines that will make the classroom safe, predictable, and efficient.
Everything else can come after that. And yes, eventually we do need to teach some math. We get there on Day 5.
I’ve put together the exact five-day first-week plan I use below so you can see what this actually looks like in a secondary math classroom.
The First Week Isn't Wasted Instructional Time
I know what you’re thinking.
“But I have a pacing guide.”
Yep. Me too.
“But we have so much curriculum to cover!”
I know.
“But shouldn’t we start teaching content right away?”
Maybe. But I would argue that the time you spend intentionally building your classroom during the first week is an investment in the rest of the year.
Think about how much instructional time can disappear later because students don’t know what to do.
Where do they turn in their papers?
What happens when they need a pencil?
What should they do when they finish?
How do they get your attention?
What happens during a transition?
What should they do when they walk into the classroom?
What happens if they need help?
What does it look like when students are working with a partner?
These things may seem small, but when students know exactly what to do, your classroom runs differently.
I’ve written more about this in The Efficient Classroom: Procedures, but my philosophy is pretty simple. Procedures aren’t rules. Procedures are the routines that help everyone know what to expect. They create consistency and stability, which can make the classroom feel safer and reduce the anxiety that comes from not knowing what’s going to happen next.
And there’s another piece that matters just as much.
Students need to feel like they belong.
The First Week Is About Relationships, Too
I don’t want my students to walk into my classroom on the first day and feel like they’re just another name on my roster.
I want them to know that I’m happy they’re there. I want to learn their names. I want them to learn each other’s names. I want them to have opportunities to talk to people they might not normally talk to.
And maybe most importantly, I want them to start feeling comfortable enough to participate.
I’ve written before about eight mostly-free ways to build classroom community, and one of the things I believe pretty strongly is that structure and community aren’t competing priorities. They actually work really well together.
Students can feel welcomed and still have high expectations. They can have fun and still have structure. They can have choices and still know exactly what’s expected of them.
That’s the kind of classroom culture I want to start building from Day 1.
My First Week of School: Day by Day
Day 1: Welcome Them and Let Them Breathe
My first goal on Day 1 is pretty simple:
Make students glad they walked through my door.
I stand at the door and greet students as they come in. I let them choose where they want to sit, which helps take some of the anxiety out of that first day.
I introduce myself, take attendance, and pay attention to names and pronunciations. Then we take care of the unavoidable beginning-of-school housekeeping: the syllabus, supplies, and anything else students need to know.
But I don’t spend the entire period talking at them.
Instead, students complete a low-stress All About Me activity.
I like activities like this because they give students something to do with their hands while giving me an opportunity to circulate, talk to students, and start learning about them.
My particular first-day activity is a sneaker-themed All About Me activity, and I let students choose the sneaker they want and personalize it. The goal isn’t to produce a Pinterest-worthy piece of artwork. The goal is to give me a reason to walk around the room and have conversations with kids.
That is a much better use of my first day than standing at the front of the room reading a syllabus word-for-word.
Day 2: Get Them Talking to Each Other
On Day 2, we’re still focused on community.
I greet students at the door and, again, allow them to sit where they want. This gives me another opportunity to see where students naturally gravitate and who they choose to sit with.
Then we move into a more interactive All About Me activity.
Students complete several sections independently before using partner matching cards to find someone to interview. They introduce themselves, interview their partner, and record the information on their own paper.
Then I get them moving.
Students walk around the room, meet classmates, and collect names.
Finally, students introduce their new partner to the class. I especially like this part because it takes some of the pressure off students who are nervous about speaking in front of everyone. They aren’t standing there trying to tell the class something interesting about themselves. They’re simply sharing something they just learned about another person.
That’s a small change, but it makes public speaking feel much less intimidating.
And, more importantly, students are beginning to learn each other’s names. A classroom community isn’t built because we do one magical icebreaker on the first day. It’s built through repeated opportunities for students to interact, connect, and feel known.
Day 3: Now We Start Building the Machine
By Day 3, it’s time to start teaching the procedures and routines that will make learning possible.
I assign seats alphabetically by first name. This is a little different from what students expect, but it helps me learn names and gives me a consistent seating arrangement while I’m still figuring out the dynamics of the class. It also helps if you have multiple students with the same first name!
Then we start learning classroom procedures. And I don’t just tell students what the procedures are.
I actually teach them.
If I tell them, “When I ring the bell, you need to stop talking and be in your seat,” that doesn’t necessarily mean students know what that looks like.
So we practice. For example, if a bell is my attention-getter, I can have students intentionally talk and move around the room. Then I ring the bell, count them down, and see how quickly they can respond.
If it doesn’t go well? We do it again. That’s not wasted time. That’s the lesson.
My procedure lessons are intentionally interactive, too. I use a Q&A format and randomly choose students to read questions aloud. We talk through the answers and, whenever possible, I let students demonstrate the wrong way before practicing the right way.
It sounds a little ridiculous. That’s kind of the point.
Students are much more likely to remember a procedure they actually practiced than one they heard me explain while sitting quietly in a desk.
I also tell students why we’re taking this time.
Our procedures help the classroom feel safe and orderly, and there will be a quiz. Because if I’m going to hold students accountable for procedures, I need to make sure I’ve actually taught them.
Day 4: Finish the Procedures and Build Ownership
Day 4 is the second half of our procedures and routines. We also set up our interactive notebooks. This is another place where I intentionally slow down. We number pages correctly, set up the Table of Contents, and give students time to personalize their notebooks.
For my interactive notebook setup, students number odd pages on the right and even pages on the left, all the way from 1 to 100. It takes some time.
But I would rather spend a little extra time making sure everyone knows exactly how the notebook works to avoid wasting time in the future when I am answering questions about where things go.
And letting students decorate and personalize their notebooks gives them some ownership over something they’re going to use throughout the year.
Then students have an opportunity to ask questions, talk to a neighbor about anything they’re unsure about, and finally take the procedure quiz.
Notice the sequence here:
Teach → Practice → Check for Understanding → Assess → Reteach
That isn’t just how I teach the procedures.
It’s how I will teach them math, too.
Day 5: Okay, Now We Can Do Some Math
And finally, on Day 5, we start transitioning into our normal academic routine.
We begin with bell work. This is intentional. I don’t want bell work to suddenly appear three weeks into the school year and expect students to magically know what to do. It’s a procedure, so we practice it.
Then we move into a vocabulary graphic organizer and the first lesson of the year using guided notes.
And just like that, we’re officially doing math.
But we’re doing it in a classroom where students already know:
- How to enter the room
- Where to sit
- What to do when class begins
- How to get my attention
- How to respond during instruction
- How to use their notebooks
- What to do with materials
- How to ask questions
- What I expect during transitions
- What our classroom routines look like
That foundation makes everything that comes afterward easier.
You can download the complete week-one lesson plan here and use it as-is or adapt it to fit your own classroom. The full plan includes everything I do from Day 0 preparation through the first actual lesson on Day 5.
But What About the Curriculum?
I know some of you are reading this thinking, Kacie, I literally cannot spend four days not teaching content.
Fair. Every school, district, grade level, and pacing guide is different. If you need to introduce content earlier, you absolutely can. But I would still make sure you’re intentionally building in time for these two things:
Relationships and routines.
You can combine them with academic content if you need to. Once you establish your bell work routine, for example, you can use content review as the bell work. You can teach procedures during transitions in an academic lesson. You can build relationships while students work on a math task.
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. The important part is that you don’t let the urgency of “covering content” crowd out the foundational work that will help you teach that content more effectively later.
The math is coming. There is plenty of it. But before I ask students to take risks, explain their thinking, work with classmates, make mistakes, and tackle challenging problems, I want to give them a classroom where they feel comfortable enough to do those things.
So if your first week doesn’t look like a traditional week of curriculum, don’t panic. You’re still teaching. You’re just teaching the things that will make the rest of the year run better.
And honestly, your future self will thank you for it.
