Back to School Writing Activites

Back to school is around the corner, and it is time to start thinking about ways to get to know your students.

As a shy student myself, I have never been a huge fan of getting to know you activities that require me to talk to a lot of people or heaven forbid in front of the whole class. 

Instead, I tend to do some sort of writing activity to get to know my students.  These are always fun and shorter writing activities.  I also get the added benefit, of being able to start to assess some of their writing skills.  

Here are some different back to school ideas for English classrooms: 

1. Six-Word Memoirs - For the last several years my students have done Six-Word Memoirs on the first day of school. (Not sure what a six-word memoir is? Watch this YouTube Video from SixWords.) I tell my students they can write their memoir about who they are or about how they currently feel about their lives.  We do them on index cards and they put their names on the back.  I then hang all their memoirs on my classroom door with the phrase "What is Your Story?" I include my six-word memoir and invite administrators, teachers, and other staff members to add their own six-word memoirs too. 
2. I am From Poems - This one of my favorite writing activities.  If I don't do it at the beginning of the year, I will incorporate it during my poetry unit.  This is a free verse poem, and students do not have to worry about rhyme or meter.  I have students write 7-12 stanzas with each stanza being 3-5 lines.  Each stanza starts with the phrase "I Am From".  Students then talk about the things that make them who they are such as family, hobbies, appearance, traditions, etc. I require my students to include a set number of figurative language examples.  The length and requirements can be altered depending on your students' ages and your goals. I provide students an example of my poem as well as some stanzas from student's poems in the past to get them started. You can get an editable copy of the instructions and rubric as well as some examples here for $1.00. 

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   Create a Meme - This one is a little out of the box. But, students need to learn how usual visuals to communicate, and this can give you some insight into what kind of sense of humor your students have.  Last school year when closures happened, one of the assignments was for students to create memes about how they felt about what was going on during the COVID-19 pandemic. I start to think that this could be a fun activity for the beginning of the year too.  Students could create memes that reflect who they are, their lives, or how they feel about returning to school.  You could create a Google Slide template or a Google Drawing template for them to use or allow them to use an online meme generator.  I would provide students will a couple of your own examples that reflect your life and sense of humor. (I have included a meme I created as an example for my own students.)
4. Author Bios - This one may take a couple of days to do because it does have a writing lesson involved. Start off by having students list things that make them unique or are important to their identity.   Find examples of Author Bios from the back of books. I would pick authors that your kids may be familiar with or you think write books your students would enjoy. Then in small groups have students read and discuss what they notice about the author bios. How are they alike and how are they different? Then come back as a class to create an anchor chart.  One side of the chart you list the similarities in content and on the other side you list the similarities in structure. For example, students should notice that author bios are extremely short and to the point and are often written in third-person.  They should also notice that information often includes things like awards, social media handles, where an author is from, hobbies, etc. Then students will take their lists and write author bios about themselves. If you do writers notebooks or online writing portfolios, author bios are a great first writing project for them. They can be published on the home page or cut out and pasted on the back of their notebooks. 

Those are a few of my favorite back to school activities.  What are some activities you would recommend? Please leave them in the comments below.