4 Key EdTech Activities for The First Day of School

The first day of school is always special. It is a time when we get to meet our new students and help them get ready for a successful start of a lifelong learning experience. There are a number of practical activities. that you can use with students during this particular day. Below are four key examples of learning activities to try out using technology in your class. For more ideas and tips on what you can do on the first day of school check the sources at the bottom of this post.

1- Time capsule

Get students to create individual time capsules where they outline their goals for the whole school year. Students can add images and other multimedia materials to their time capsules using tools such as Google Docs, Sheets, Pages, Book Creator, Word., among others. Collect finalized capsules from students and save them in a folder till the last day of school and reopen the folder and allow students to reflect on their goals. 

2- Learn students names and pronounce them correctly

3- Classroom agreement

Another practical activity to do in the first day of school is to work with students  to brainstorm ideas. for a classroom agreement. I like the notion of classroom agreement instead of classroom rules as the earlier involves a participatory and student-centred approach. Basically, the agreement outlines clearly the dos and don’ts you and your students agree upon  to help create an optimal learning environment in class.The final draft can be designed in the form of a classroom poster to be printed and hang up on the classroom wall or uploaded to the class website or blog. Tools to use for this purpose include Canva, PiktoChart, Google Draw, Adobe Spark, among others. 

4- Read a book

You can start off your first day of school by assigning students books designed specifically for this event. I have curated this list of excellent first day-of-school books that you can use with your students in class. Check it out.

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