Two Different "Day 1" Lessons
along with video explainers for each as far as the how and why
I hate to be the person talking about the beginning of school in the middle of July but today I’m going to be the person talking about the beginning of school in the middle of July.
More specifically, the first day of school.
(Of course, if you’re like me and have until the end of August before you actually have to show back up to your school, feel free to ignore this for another month!)
Full disclosure: I absolutely love the first day of school.
It’s exhilarating and exhausting in the most purposeful of ways, as that first impression matters a great deal, in my experience—with all sorts of potential for establishing what your classroom culture can possibly become.
Too often, though, I worry that this is a missed opportunity in classrooms, with students spending much of their first day of the school year staring eyes-glazed at syllabi or going through the motions of icebreakers they’ve experienced ten times over. (Two truths and a lie, anyone?)
For me? I want three things to be true for students within that opening lesson:
To have experienced what collaborative learning can be like
To have reflected on their own perspective and story
To have felt that their time was spent meaningfully
Both of the lessons shared in this post have for several years now checked all three of those boxes in our classroom—which is why I wanted to not only share the resources for them (which you’re welcome to use/adapt!) but also provide a video walk-through of each lesson, too, with my own “play-by-play” of how it goes.
(As I mentioned in a previous post, this is a goal for me going forward with The Broken Copier: embedding more video overviews and explanations within resource posts like this one. If you find it helpful or have feedback on how it could be better, don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments or to email feedback directly!)
📋 Opening Lesson #1: Beginning with Core Values
What: This lesson is built around two activities—a core values “narrowing” and reflection that becomes the foundation of our classroom for the year as well as a 5-question “index card survey” that I very much prefer over more-extensive surveys that I used to open the year with earlier in my career. Students begin by choosing eight potential core values and then narrowing down to what is ultimately their top core value to begin the year, and then answer four more questions along the way with some partner discussion woven within the survey.
Why: I have used this format of a lesson to open the school year for some time in so many contexts, and every single time it accomplishes the three things I noted earlier: [1] students get to experience authentic collaboration without it feeling divorced from the purpose of our classroom, which I would argue some icebreakers can feel like for students; [2] students have a chance to reflect, individually and collaboratively, on things that matter for them as learners while still having agency in terms of what they share aloud; and [3] I am able to show them in numerous ways why this opening lesson matters for our classroom—including the fact that, since the “index card survey” is only five questions, I have the opportunity to read through every single answer for every single student before they walk back in the room. (Which matters!)
📋 Opening Lesson #2: Beginning with a Poem
What: In this opening lesson that I use with my juniors, I throw a bit of a curveball at them right away by starting with poetry. (Yes, some of them are quite frantic that a teacher would deign to dive into poetry on Day 1!)
Students begin this lesson by brainstorming imagery details about a specific place that has meant a lot to them at some point in their life, and then we set those brainstorms aside as they read and analyze “In a Station of the Metro” by Ezra Pound, a two-line poem that does so much in those two-lines—which then leads to them writing and sharing their own poem using their initial brainstorms before the lesson ends, and I get to end that first day with a handful of narrative poems from this new group of students for the year!
Why: Well first off, I delight in the fact that students can proclaim that on the very first day of the school year they wrote a poem! A nice break from all the syllabi, right?
But on a substantive level, this lesson does a lot in terms of immediately establishing the culture of our room in terms setting a bar of [a] purposeful, academic discussion and analysis that walks hand-in-hand with [b] opportunities for students to share their own perspective and story. I worry about a false dichotomy in too many classrooms that suggests these two things has to live separately—and this opening lesson intentionally marries them in a way that foreshadows how symbiotic we’ll strive for them to become in our classroom moving forward.
🗒️ A Few More Things
First of all, please don’t hesitate to share your favorite opening lesson in the comments, too—learning from each other continues to be the biggest of wins with this growing community here at The Broken Copier. But I also wanted to mention a handful of other scattered points before signing off:
Building on the “pivot to video” that this post leaned on, I also had a really cool chance to talk with the always-great in a livestream Substack conversation last week. While part of it was definitely just us catching up, we tried to lean into reader and listener questions about teaching that we could consider from our different vantage points given that Adrian works with 5th graders and I work with high schoolers. We also had a fair amount of people watching along live and offering additional feedback in the chat—so keep a look out for future conversations like this via livestream later this summer!
#PoemADayJuly continues onward into its third week! It has been beyond-cool to see so many different folks jumping into the conversation on Bluesky with their own noticings and wonderings for different poems, and more than anything I’m reminded of how enriching it is to simply talk about literature with other education-mind folks. If you haven’t checked it out yet, it’s never too late to dive in! Plus, we’re keeping track of all the resources and conversations at the link above, in case it’s helpful to your classroom going forward.
Lots of Conversations Ahead! We’ve already been able to talk with so many folks in recent months, but be on the lookout for a return appearance by next week in a two-part conversation on Teach For America (finally!) along with a few other chats we’ll be posting soon! A foundational value with The Broken Copier since Day 1 has been centering the voices of teachers in the education conversation and, reflecting back especially over the past year, it has been incredibly meaningful to lean into those conversations more and more.
Note: featured image for this blog post from Pexels.com by Ann H
I love these ideas! I used your "core values" shapes lesson last year (I think you shared a slightly different slide deck?). One of my favorites is this "boxes" activity, which asks students which boxes they feel stuck in and which ones they want to break out of. It's a way to reflect on who they are as writers and introduce themselves to me at once. I use it with my comp classes but it could fit in any English class. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qlneDFqsh1XU6OnXrfp9VN_ItBggHHnNHnQF6CGT7-E/edit?usp=drivesdk
Marcus--Like all of your work, this activity is thoughtful and engaging. It sets the stage for the learning you and your students will be doing TOGETHER for the rest of the year--an authentic community builder that gives credence to everyone's values/identity in the class. One fun adaptation I might make for ELA class is to replace the shapes with literary characters--bonus points if it can offer a little preview to literary characters that students will encounter in their reading for the class later in the year. For example, Huck Finn could be a circle or a squiggle (students could debate this later if reading/teaching the novel). Piggy from LotF is likely a square. Teachers in other subject areas could adapt similarly--periodic elements in Chemistry class, historical figures/eras in History class, etc. Thanks for sharing--your influence goes well beyond your classroom!