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3 Important Ideas for The First Week of School: Get to Know Your Students

Last Updated 19 September 2023/ By Zineb DJOUB

The second important idea for the first week of school is to get to know your students. Getting to know them will help you make effective instructional decisions to improve your practices. Indeed, any decision you make, including the way you interact with your students, is based on who they are.

Keeping this picture in mind, leaving no space for your assumptions about your students, and having the intention to take it into account, constitute the bedrock of effective teaching practices.

But, to know your students, what information do you need to get about them, and how to collect it?

Students’ names

Knowing students goes beyond knowing their names, yet you should not negate the importance of getting those names in mind. Calling students by their names is the first sign of your concern about their learning, care about their engagement and progress, and intention to maintain healthy relationships with them.

But, how to remember students’ names, mainly in large classes?

You cannot know all the students’ names from the first week, but try to learn some of them. Here are some tips to remember them:

• Associate your students’ names with the names of people you know (your family, relatives, friends, neighbours, etc.) ;
• assign tasks to each student this week and note down the student’s name and his task (For example, John writes the date on the board, Mary hands out the worksheets, etc.);
• use activities where students introduce themselves and get to know each other;
• ask students to say their names before speaking in class;
• use About Me task. The kind of information students provide will help you remember their names since you will associate the name of each student with the type of personality she has. Listen to your students attentively while presenting such information in class.

Students’ types

Knowing about what types of students you have is a process that requires time and interaction, along with your observations and reflection. The first week can help you get a general profile of your students. Over time, its details and characteristics will get clearer.

However, the kind of profile you can get during the first week depends on your student’s grade. Elementary school students cannot tell about their goals, expectations, and needs since they are not aware of them.

Still, if you are teaching these students (except the first grade) you can know about their background, learning experience, preferences, and needs using drawings. You can ask them, for instance, to draw their school, teachers, what they like and describe them in class. You can also test them to find out about their needs.

For other levels (middle and high school and also college), you can get more relevant information about:

1) Students’ learning experience: students depict their own experience in the subject and its impact on their feelings, perceptions, and attitudes towards learning.

2) Their goals: these are smart goals. Students indicate what they want to achieve this year and how they intend to achieve it.

3) Expectations: these are the kind of knowledge and skills students expect to develop at the end of the course, besides expected teachers’ attitudes in the classroom and learning of the course.

4) Needs: cover the skills, strategies, and knowledge students need to develop in the course, and the psychological support required from both teachers and parents to support students to thrive.

5) Preferences: include what tasks students like to get involved in (what they prefer) and how they like to express themselves in the classroom (communication style).

To support you in obtaining such information more effectively and efficiently, you can download My Profile and hand it out to your students during the first week of school. Instructions on using these worksheets are also included here.

So, what are you waiting for? Use these resources. You will learn a lot about your students and head in the right direction. All the best.