Awesome First Week of School With Your ESL Students

We know how important the first week of school with your ESL students is.

For many of us, even though it seems that summer has just begun, the new school year is right around the corner. 

Someone who is not a teacher often has this vision of educators lounging by the pool, reading books, sleeping till noon and otherwise enjoying their vacation. Which is true!

But what a layman does not know, and what I have come to fully realize this summer, is that once a teacher – always a teacher. After some rest, we still look for materials, go to teacher Facebook groups to ask questions, teach summer school, attend professional development, take classes, plan our year ahead of time because we know how little of it we will have once the day actually comes and do all other things related to our job and our students.

First day of school in other parts of the world

When I was a kid, our school would always start on September 1. There were no district calendars that change from year to year – the school year began on September 1 in the entire country and that was that. In addition, that day was the day to meet your teacher, and there was an aura of celebration in the air because you put your clean uniform on (and when they did away with the uniforms, your best clothes), buy beautiful flowers for your teacher and march to school. The first day meant no classes, no academics, just reconnecting with your friends, meeting new and old teachers and in general, marked a new school year. 

September 2 – back to work and the first week activities were business as usual – we sit in our desks, teacher talks, we write, or read and that was that.. I personally do not remember being involved in any kind of relationship-building activity, or participating in creating classroom rules. It was all given to us, expected to follow. 

Nothing wrong with that, if you ask me. But as a teacher of English learners in an English speaking environment, and as a person, I operate a bit differently. 

What does the first week of school look like?

The first week of school with your ESL students is usually hectic for both teachers and students alike. For English learners, especially the new ones, or ones that are moving up grade levels to a different school, it can have an added stress of uncertainty about everything from rules and expectations to doubts whether they will have friends. 

In this article, I will go over the three main goals of an ESL teacher that can be accomplished in the first week. 

There are different ways on how to accomplish them because yes, they are rather broad. But at the same time, they will give you a really good start to your year, whatever grade level you work with and whether you teach ESL students one on one or have a classroom of newcomers. 

Get to know your students – build relationships

Set expectations and establish routine

Gather information

First week of school with your ESL students – goal #1:

Get to know your students

This seems like simple advice that we all are aware of, but from experience, I know how easy it is to get overwhelmed with the to-do lists, standards, seating charts, and other important stuff. 

None of it is as important, in my opinion, as getting to know your students, though. Everyone is nervous on the first day, including the teacher. And even if you are in a scenario where you have the same students (for example, if you are an itinerant teacher who works with students for years until they no longer meet the criteria for being in the ESOL program), there will still be jitters. 

Here are a few ideas for building relationships

Play a warm-up game. In one of my posts – 6 Ice-breakers for a Good Start of the Year  – I share some ideas of the games you can play. A different game throughout the week for, say, 10 minutes of the class, will allow you to get to know your students better and see the patterns of the dynamic in the class that you can work with. 

Casual yet structured atmosphere. How casual and how structured, of course, will depend on the age of your students and whether you’ve worked with them before or not. In any case, it could present a challenge. 

However, casual may mean that instead of calling your students by the names for attendance, you ask them to write their names on a sheet of paper as they are entering the classroom. That way none of them will be singled out and feel uncomfortable. 

For the first day, students could also choose a place to sit, explore the classroom, doodle while you talk and in general, get acclimated to the new year. 

As far as structure goes, the casual day does not mean that work is not done. It can also mean for you to have activities prepared that will show you where your students are at in terms of reading, writing, speaking/listening. 

• Introduce yourself while they listen and then repeat
• They can write or draw their name, and explain its pronunciation. 
• Show them around the class and talk about what supplies they need for this class: pencil, binder, notebook, etc. (for beginners, it is a good time to show pictures of the required items as well), go over the bell schedule
• Give homework: a sheet with impressions of their first day at school to be given back to you at the start of class the next day. 

I Am That Teacher shares more first week activities that you can implement with your middle-schoolers and adapt her ideas to English learners. 

First week – goal #2

Set expectations and establish a routine

Students (and people in general, dare I say) at any age thrive from knowing what comes next and from knowing what is expected of them. 

Think about what your expectations for the class are. 

For younger students:

What is the routine? When do they work with you? For how long? etc.

What are you going to do in class every day, regardless of the theme and topic covered?

What is the talking expectation?

What is the bathroom expectation?

For older students

What is the expectation for classwork and homework? 

Will there be a lot of cooperative learning or is it a more teacher-centered environment?

What is the cell phone policy at school and in your classroom?

Are there bathroom breaks?

What do the students do if they were absent and have work to finish?

Where can they find assignments and textbooks?

What about computers – do you use them every day, what is the rule for that?

All of the above information can be presented in a multitude of ways. 

For example, you can have a powerpoint with each point of the expectation on a separate slide. That way you can say it and answer any questions that come up. At the same time, you can also help your beginner ESL students understand what is expected by showing pictures, translating and demonstrating when necessary. 

You can also have a handout that each of your students has to read and sign. 

Another way is to have a list of expectations projected on the board and each student has one rule. They have to find a person with the other rules and then paste them all on the paper in the order it is presented on the board. This can be pinned to the bulletin board for the students to see. 

First week – goal #3

Gather information

The first week of school with your ESL students is also a great time to collect data. 

This data could be anything personal your students want to share with you is great so you are aware if something comes up: illness in the family, the need for them to be absent to translate for the family members who do not speak English, their ambitions, or fears, etc. 

Data also means that you screen the new students, review the test scores of the ones who are not new, and possibly do a few assignments that cover all language domains – listening, reading, speaking and writing – that would give you an idea of where to start. 

If you have beginner level students, it is a good time to check if they know the English alphabet, names of numbers, days of the week, months, classroom objects, colors, shapes, etc. 

For intermediate level students, give a writing/speaking prompt that would require them to write more than two sentences so that you can gauge the spelling, grammatical and syntactical structures. 

Before I go, I’d like to leave you with some resources that you might find helpful, especially if you are a middle school teacher. I have participated in the MS ELA summit where Language Arts teachers shared their ideas, and quite a few of them are universal and can be applied with your ESL students. 

Here are a few other ice-breaker ideas. 

Here are also some freebie downloads from Sheltered Language Resources – a middle school teacher, who specializes in helping English learners in the mainstream classroom. 

What are your goals and activities during the first week of school with your ESL students? Share in the comments below!