The end of summer is always an interesting blend of savoring every last moment and prepping for back to school. Between buying supplies for my own children & setting up my classroom, back to school season can be both exciting and stressful. This is only amplified when you’re making the switch to skills-based health. Read on for some back to school activities, classroom management strategies and routines that may make it just a little easier.
Setting Up Your Classroom
I don’t know about you but the staff days before school starts are never enough to get everything done. I like to go to school a week or two early to get myself set up. So what is the ideal classroom set up? I’m sure it’s different for everyone but here are a few tips:
✔ Make the skills an obvious part of your décor
I created a poster for each skill I teach. I used Canva to create & print them (after checking prices at Staples, Kinkos and Vistaprint). Each poster highlights a skill model like SMART Goals, the CRAAP Test and a few I’ve created on my own. I created a color scheme that matched my school colors and stuck with it for all of my decorations.
✔ Highlight student work
I do a Social Norms project when teaching about ATOD. Students create posters that prove most kids make healthy choices. In addition to displaying them throughout the school, I use the previous years posters on a bulletin board in my classroom. The more students that believe most kids make healthy choices (which our YRBS data proves to be true), the easier it is for them to make healthy choices themselves.
✔ Leave space for curiosity and imagination
One of the first units I teach is about planning and goal setting. One wall of my classroom is dedicated as a timeline. At the start of the semester the timeline is empty, by the end of the first month it is populated with student goals. It’s a constant reminder of what students want to accomplish now and in the future and is easy to reference in lessons throughout the year.
✔ Advertise health resources
At some point throughout the semester, students take on an advocacy project. Oftentimes students choose topics related to mental health, vaping and safety. I display last year’s flyers in my classroom. This year, I’ve also asked my principal to print them and distribute them to every teacher in the building to help advertise our Safe School Helpline, The Trevor Project Textline, The Crisis Textline, and the new Suicide Hotline (988).
✔ Make it flexible
Years ago, I took all of the desks out of my classroom and only had chairs. While students were skeptical when they first came to class, they eventually enjoyed the flexibility it allowed us. We could sit in circles, transition to groups and create open spaces for movement quickly and easily. This was long before the advent of one-to-one devices and I’m not sure it would work anymore, but it did teach me that flexibility is key. Tables kept me locked into group work and desks with attached chairs made group work difficult. My ideal is separate desks and chairs that I can move into multiple configurations depending on what’s happening in class. I also have a stability ball in class and allow students to elect to stand at the side or back of the room if they prefer to be standing.
Classroom Routines & Procedures
Last spring, we had a guest speaker at our faculty meeting. He said, “Kids don’t know how to do school anymore.” And it’s so true. From hybrid, to remote, to in-person learning, students have lost touch with the basics of “how to school.” Developing consistent routines and procedures has never been more important. Here are a couple of strategies that work for me:
✔ Time it with tunes
Within minutes of one class leaving my classroom, I cue up a song and get it playing. Sometimes it’s a song that relates to what we’re doing in class, other times it’s a song a student has requested. DJing at the start of class boosts my mood (and often gets me dancing) and creates a natural timer. I train my students to be in their seats with their folders ready to go by the time the song ends. At the beginning of the semester, I use songs that relate to creating a safe space to learn like Respect by Arethra Franklin and Be Nice by the Black Eyed Peas.
✔ Answer “What Are We Doing Today?”
My board always has the day’s guiding question and the agenda for the day, as well as any work that needs to be done at home (this is very rare and usually involves a conversation with a trusted adult). Additionally, I have a task for students to complete that will help get the lesson started. On day one, I ask them to read the information about the YRBS that they’ll have to bring home to their guardians. During class, I often return to the guiding question when we get sidetracked as a class. It helps reboot the activity to keep us on target.
✔ Keep student materials in your classroom
I don’t want to deal with endless locker trips and lost papers, so I have students keep all of their materials in my classroom. I have a milk crate for each class period I teach, housed on my window sill. In each milk crate there are 6 hanging folders each with 3-5 student folders depending on class size. All paper materials are kept in their folders along with their name plate. As they enter class, students are asked to grab their folder and the folders of those students in their group or row (all in the same hanging file folder). At the end of class, one student puts them all back for the group (a task I rotate from day to day).
✔ Make grouping students easy and painless
Last year, I developed a name plate for each student; a piece of card stock folded in half like a table tent. At the beginning of the semester students use a marker to write their preferred names and pronouns and I ask them to display it on their desk every class. It helps me learn their names and get better at using the correct pronouns. In addition, it has 4 spots marked with groups we’ll use throughout the year. They have a number group, color group, fruit group and letter group. At any point, I can group students, ensure everyone has a home and switch it up from class to class. It also ensures that no student is left without a group. I’ve used sorting sticks in the past and they are a great solution, too.
✔ Create Class Expectations with Your Students
Regardless of the grade level I’m teaching, I always start the semester with information about safety procedures. I review our fire drill route, our lockdown protocol and our sign in/sign out procedures with students. Then, I ask students to help me create guidelines for keeping our classroom emotionally safe. How can we create a safe space to learn?
In Middle School…
My MS students complete a write around the room activity in which they brainstorm ways to keep the classroom safe that coordinate with our PBIS expectations. At our school, those are to Be Safe, Be Respectful, Be Responsible & Be Kind. In previous positions, I used the word “learn” and at each station students came up with behaviors and expectations that began with a letter from the word. For example, for the letter L, students came up with things like, “listen to the teacher,” or “look at someone when they are speaking.”
In High School…
My HS students compete in teams to answer as many questions as they can in 4 minutes, racing to the board to get one question card at a time. They answer questions like, “What does a responsible & respectful student do with a cell phone during class?” and “What are the top 10 behaviors of a skilled learner?”
At both levels we take time to review student responses and I compile all of the student responses onto a poster for the next class. I ask students in every class to sign the poster as their commitment to keeping class a safe space and then I display it in the classroom.
Bonus Tip:
If you’re going to have students sign something, try cutting out individual signature cards for each student. This allows every student to sign at the same time and helps to avoid any inappropriate comments or drawings. You can then staple the signature cards around your poster.
Introduce Health Skills
Sometimes skills-based learning can feel a little “fluffy,” like it’s lacking substance. Avoid any misconceptions or negative bias, by introducing the skills in an engaging way that helps ground them in health concepts.
✔ Try a Scavenger Hunt
In my MS health classes, I compare the leading causes of death to those of the 1900s. This helps highlight advancements that have been made in the areas of medicine, hygiene, public policy and more. I also share changes in life expectancy, and let students know about an unfortunate trend of declining life expectancy in the US. Then I send students off on a group scavenger hunt to find out what today’s leading killers have in common and how they can actively reverse this new and disturbing trend. Students visit 6 destinations in the school which I’ve linked to various health behaviors and skills. For example, the library is linked with finding valid health information. At each destination they uncover skills, behaviors and code letters that they’ll unscramble to answer a final question. In this way, the skills become grounded – attached to real life content that students can relate to; creating the building blocks for our course.
✔ Create a Problem to Solve
In my HS health classes, I ask my students to work in groups to complete one of two tasks. They can either estimate the percentage of students who engage in certain risk behaviors or determine how the skills relate to one another. One group fills labeled cups with water to represent percentages while the other builds a shelter for a Lego mini-figure out of labeled skill cards. The two groups combine, to see if the shelter (created by the skills) can protect the mini-figure from “storm” (the water cups, representing risk). Again, this grounds the skills in a context that gives them more meaning and substance and provides an opportunity to reiterate that most teens do make healthy choices.
✔ Center your course outline around the skills
In addition to introducing the skills to students in a meaningful way, I’ve found it’s helpful to introduce them to parents. My course outline introduces each skill and highlights them as the focal point of instruction in class. Rather than sending it home, I share it electronically with parents via email. In this email, I introduce myself, share useful family resources that relate to health content, and explain the Youth Risk Behavior Survey that students have the opportunity to take in health classes.
✔ Use scenarios to highlight skills in context
Before having students complete self-assessments of their own, I have students assess the health and well-being of fictional characters. By doing so, students are able to determine the value of the skills and see how they may be used in teen life. I work hard to create scenarios that represent a variety of life experiences and give characters faces that match my student population as well as representing populations that may be underrepresented at our school. Case studies are also an effective way to discuss the value of empathy and the social determinants of health.
If you’re just starting or have no time…
Back to school season is no doubt a busy time of year. If you’re just beginning your skills-based journey and are hopeful to incorporate these ideas but don’t know where to start or to find the time; please check out the Skills-Based Health Starter Pack.
Are you a middle school teacher? Check out the Middle School Back to School Bundle. It has everything from the Starter Pack plus 6 hours of instructional material to jumpstart your skills-based health class.
