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5 Back-to-School Icebreakers to Help Your Students Settle In

These fun and engaging activities are the perfect way to welcome students back to school and lay the foundations for a strong classroom community at the same time.

By Scholastic Editors
July 21, 2023

Looking for a few fun, ready-to-go icebreakers to help your students settle back into the classroom and inspire learning? These five back-to-school icebreakers from Scholastic Teachables are perfect for welcoming your young learners back to school and helping you to get to know your new students.

Plus, check out these five books and activities to help create a culture of kindness in your classroom at the beginning of the year!

1. Blast Off! Play-by-Play Through Your First Day

This 16-page resource provides a framework for the first day of school, from first bell to last. Specific routines, activities, and ideas for each grade (Kindergarten to grade 4) help welcome students, orient them to the classroom and the school, establish classroom rules and routines, and introduce them to each other (and you!) with icebreaker activities and a “Treasure Chest” fill-in page.

2. No One Slept Well Last Night—The First Days of School: New Teacher Resources

Experienced teachers share tips, tricks, and advice on how to make the first days easier for everyone in this helpful packet. Includes several student interest surveys (across all subject areas) and get-to-know you and team-building activities like Find Someone Who…, Partner Interviews, and more.

3. Welcome to My Neighborhood! Mini-Book

Early learners will share about themselves as they each create their own mini-book about where they live. Work together to draw and discuss where children play, what they see in their neighborhoods, who they know, and what they like best.

4. Creating an Autobiographical Sketch

Kick off this lesson with a small-group icebreaker activity that asks students to share about themselves on a specific topic (pets, hobbies, favorite foods, etc.). Then model and use the three leveled graphic organizers to prompt and inspire students to write short autobiographical texts.

5. What I Treasure Most: Personal Narrative Activity

Ask students to think beyond objects to identify the things they treasure most—people, animals, or special skills and qualities. Choosing something from their lists, students then use this activity to complete a prewriting graphic organizer, write a narrative, and create a three-dimensional pop-up page to share their treasures.

These fun and engaging icebreakers are a great way to ease back-to-school jitters and create a welcoming community within your classroom. And of course, Scholastic Teachables has printable resources perfect for all your back-to-school needs! Resources in the article are free to Scholastic Teachables subscribers. Not a subscriber? Sign up now, and get a 30-day trial, or purchase each resource à la carte through the links above.

And, for more ways to get kids comfortable at the start of the school year, take a look at these books about school below. You can find all books and activities at The Teacher Store

Paperback Book

Kindergarten, Here I Come!

Grades Pre-K - K
$2.99$3.99
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This upbeat tale features easy-to-follow rhyming text, expressive illustrations, and familiar classroom scenes that will help get little ones excited for their first day of school.

Paperback Book

Too Cool for School

Grades Pre-K - 1
$4.46$5.95
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In this groovy story, Pete just can't decide which outfit to wear to school! He has so many options to choose from, so he uses his creativity to decide on the coolest one because, in the end, it's not what you wear, but how you wear it that makes you cool.

Paperback Book

How Do Dinosaurs Go To School?

Grades Pre-K - 2
$5.96$7.95
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Everyone's favorite dinosaurs are back, and this time they are going to school. These prehistoric pupils are in a class of their own!

Paperback Book

School Fun

Grades K - 1
$3.71$4.95
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Find out how much fun school can be!

 

Paperback Book

Tool School

Grades K - 2
$5.21$6.95
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Get ready young builders to twist and turn with laughter!Join a hammer, screwdriver, tape measure, saw, and pair of pliers on their first day of school. Together, they make puzzles and play games, but when it's time to build something it's suddenly every tool for itself. Working alone, each tool soon realizes that to make something great all need to cooperate!

If the teacher says to bring something from nature for show-and-tell, she does not mean an alligator! But nothing will stop Magnolia, who's determined to have the best show-and-tell of all—until her reptile starts getting her into some major trouble.

Paperback Book

Miss Nelson Is Missing!

Grades 1 - 2
$5.21$6.95
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Meet the kids in Room 207, who don't show a shred of respect for Miss Nelson, their teacher. That is until they meet Miss Viola Swamp...

$17.99$23.99
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It's just another day in the ocean for Crabby and Plankton-until they find themselves INSIDE a school of fish! This gives Plankton a fabulous idea-he and Crabby should play school! But Crabby does not want to play. In four hilarious stories, Crabby uses funny wordplay to distract Plankton from teaching, until finally he gives up and declares, “School is OUT, Crabby!”

Paperback Book

A Bad Case of Stripes

Grades 2 - 3
$5.96$7.95
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This is engaging book imaginatively explores the risks of trying to be like everyone else at school. 

Paperback Book

If I Built: If I Built a School

Grades 1 - 3
$5.21$6.95
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"Told in excellently structured rhyming couplets, this story has a Seussian feel, although the vocabulary is much more varied and advanced. Reluctant readers will be especially intrigued."-SLJ

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