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29 Back-to-School Writing Prompts for Middle and High School

The first day of school is approaching, and as a teacher, your schedule is likely already filling up with organizational and instructional prep work. However, despite all of your efforts, you may find that some students may emerge slowly from their summer hazes.

Before your middle school or high school students start their assigned reading, get them engaged with these back-to-school writing prompts. Fill up some class time with a few warm-up writing prompts below, or send students home with a larger assignment to get them back into the swing of things!

First Day of School Writing Prompts: Middle School Students

Classroom Prompt Assignments

• Stream of consciousness is when a character lets their thoughts continuously flow. Write a stream of consciousness story of your own and see where your thoughts take you.
• For the new school year, what new skill would you choose to learn if you had the time, money, and ability? Why?
• Write a critique of a book, movie, or show you recently read or watched. What were its strong points? What were its weak ones?
• Describe the reigning emotions you felt this summer. Why did you feel that way, and how do you think these emotions might change as the school year progresses?
• Choose a place you traveled to this summer, either locally or far away, and write a blog post about that location. Should other people visit as well? It could be a restaurant, a town, a shop, or a favorite spot to hang out.
• If there is a club, sport, class, or event you are excited about this year, write what you already know about it. Follow up with some expectations that you have for the experience and yourself.
• A flashbulb memory is a very detailed memory that you have from when you were young. Do you have any memories like that, and if so, what are they about? Are there any events that have happened recently that you think you will remember for a long time?
• Do you have any traditions? If not, which one would you want to start this year?
• Describe the most memorable school project that you’ve ever done. Would you like to do a similar project this year, and if so, how can it be adapted to what you’re learning now?
• If you could create a themed book display for your school library, what would it be? Which titles would it include, and why?

Take-Home Writing Assignments

• Write a letter to your younger self, and then another to your older self.
• One important rule of creative writing is to “Show Don’t Tell.” Write a 1,500-word short story in your favorite genre, following this rule.
• Write a local wildlife guide to your backyard, neighborhood, local park, or even the school itself. What flora and fauna exist there?
• Write a 1,000-word essay about an aspect of your summer that focuses on the five basic senses—Sight, Hearing, Smell, Taste, and Touch.

First Day of School Writing Prompts: High School Students

• Set three resolutions for yourself to accomplish this year and describe why those are the ones you chose.
• Write a list of How-To instructions for something that you know how to do. It could be making a meal, cleaning something, playing a game, babysitting, drawing a picture, etc.
• Create a dream college for you to attend once you graduate. Which academic programs does it offer? What sports, art classes, and clubs are offered? Where is it located?
• Write a short story using only dialogue. Work on creating different voices for each character. If it helps, take notes on each character before the dialogue starts. Does one character use slang? Is the other excitable? Is one character older than the other?
• Write a song on a subject that isn’t usually heard in other songs.
• Create a new class for your school to offer. Why do you think that class is necessary? What are the learning goals for that class, and what are the assignments?
• Which app do you spend the most time on? What are the positive aspects of using the app? What are the negatives?
• Is there a cause that you want to be a part of? What is it, and why is it important to you?
• Create a new club for your community or school. What is the club about? What are your goals, and who do you hope will join?
• Describe three things that you are looking forward to this year.
• What is your ultimate dream job? Research the industry, company, or role you’re interested in and report on what it is and how to get there. Conclude with your expectations before and after your research. Is the job what you thought it was?
• Choose a position with the local government to run for and outline a platform to run on. Then, write a speech to voters about your platform. Make sure to research your current representatives to learn what their platforms are.
• What is going on in the town or city that you live in? Research local events, places, volunteer opportunities, parks, clubs, etc. Visit a new place or attend a new event, then write a review of your experiences using descriptive language. Would you go back again? Why or why not?
• An executive summary is an intro to a business plan that is designed to grab the reader’s attention by summarizing what the new business will accomplish. Write an executive summary between 500 and 1,000 words for a product, venture, or business that you wish existed.
• Research a historical figure that looks a little like you do (bonus points if you’ve never heard of them before now). What did they accomplish?

No matter how much or how little your students read this summer, get their creativity flowing with these thought-provoking journal prompts to kick off the year. By focusing on descriptive language, persuasive arguments, and ideas for the future, your middle school or high school class will find their writer's stride in no time.

Try Writable to support your ELA curriculum, district benchmarks, and state standards with more than 600 fully customizable writing assignments and rubrics for students in Grades 3–12 .

Try out a free trial of Writable today by following these steps:

• Go to hmh.writable.com
• Click "Log in or Create Account"
• Choose "I'm a teacher"
• Sign in with Google or Microsoft account
• Select the grade level you teach
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17 Fun First Day Of School Writing Activities

The smell of freshly painted halls, the excited chatter of returning students bursting with two months’ worth of gossip to share—it must be the first day at school again.

Rusty pens and dusty pencils are hastily pulled from the bottom of school bags where, for many, they’ve lain all summer, ready for back to school.

You’ll need engaging writing activities to get those atrophied writing muscles back in shape. The standard ‘What I Did This Summer’ essay won’t cut it.

Luckily, we have 17 Great Back-to-School Writing Activities for you to help shake off the cobwebs and get your students’ writing skills back on par. Let’s get started.

Ice Breaker

Writing activities.

At the start of each school year, there’s likely to be a new face or two in the class, and while two months isn’t a long time in the grand scheme of things, our students can do a lot of growing and changing in that time.

Ice-breaker writing activities allow students to connect with others in the class. They give students some insight into the lives of their classmates.

Here are some fun ice-breaker writing activities to get the new school year off to a strong start writing-wise.

The A to Z of Me! Poem

Students write an acrostic poem about themselves in the A to Z of Me. The poem’s first line starts with the letter A, and each new line begins with the following letter of the alphabet, which should reveal something about the poet.

This may be too long for younger students – it’d be a 26-line poem after all. In this case, you can quickly adapt the activity to employ the letters of the student’s first name.

This activity aims for students to capture the essence of who they are in their poems. They can write a phrase or line based on their interests, appearance, things they have done, hobbies, desires, ideas, where they’re from, etc.

You can make this more challenging for older and stronger students by insisting they employ a rhyme scheme throughout their poems.

For example, they could write their poem in couplets (AA, BB, CC, etc.) or with an alternate line rhyming scheme (AB, AB, AB, etc).

When students have finished writing their acrostic poems about themselves, they can perform it to the whole class as a class poetry slam.

Guess Who? Writing Task

This fun activity challenges students to recall what they know about their classmates or, in the case of a newly formed group of students, to explore their initial impressions of each other.

In Guess Who?, the teacher divides the students into two groups. Each group writes down a unique fact about themselves on a piece of paper, folds it , and gives it to the teacher.

If everyone already knows each other very well, you might want to limit the facts to something they did over the summer that the others in the class are unaware of.

Students could write about a hobby or talent, a language they speak, a place they visited, or anything that makes them unique or special.

Students then take turns reading a fact written by someone from the other group, and they then guess who wrote it.

A point is awarded for each correct guess, the winning team being the team with the most points.

Interview A Classmate Writing Activity :

This activity allows students to get to know each other better while developing their interviewing, note-taking, and writing skills.

 Begin this activity by asking the students to compile a list of questions that they would use to get to know someone they’d met for the first time.

 The first questions the students generally tend to be surface-level small-talk-type questions such as:

•  Where are you from?
• How many brothers and sisters do you have?
• What’s your favourite subject at school?
• What are your hobbies?
• What do you want to be when you grow up?
• What’s the best thing about you?

Write these on the whiteboard, of course. They’ll be helpful to as warm-up openers at the beginning of the interviews, but we want to encourage a deeper dive.

For the interviewer to better understand the interviewee, they’ll need to probe further.

Encourage students to come up with more challenging questions to ask in the interview and write these on the board. These questions should be geared toward gaining insight beyond the superficial.

Explain to the students that when they are the interviewee, if they’d prefer not to answer a specific question, they can just say “next” and the interviewer will move immediately onto the next question.

Some examples of deeper, more probing-type questions might include questions like:

•  Can you tell me about an event or a story that significantly impacted your life?
• Who has had the most significant influence on who you are?
• What is the most challenging thing you’ve ever had to do?
• What is your best memory? Worst?

At the end of this brainstorming session, a considerable list of questions should be on the whiteboard.

Students are then partnered up. They will then take turns interviewing each other, with each interviewer taking comprehensive notes as they interview.

Students should not use voice recording equipment during this activity. This activity aims to improve note-taking abilities.

When the interviews are over, students write them up as best they can, using their notes and memories to recreate them.

For the more advanced students, this will involve recreating the interview’s dialogue and weaving a narrative around it to convey the interviewee’s character, expressions, and mannerisms.

First Day of School Persuasive Wish List Task

The start of a new school year is a time of hope and possibility captured in the form of a wish list.

But this isn’t an old wish list but a persuasive one.

The students will write a wish list of things they hope for from the new school year.

The twist is that they must make their case for why they should receive the concessions they seek.

Some items that might make the wish list could be the desire to see more time for their favourite activities, less homework, or creating a class council. It doesn’t matter what is on the list but that the student makes as strong a case as possible for them.

Students should be encouraged to use the full range of persuasive writing techniques  available, from emotional language to social proof, from repetition to evidence and statistics.

Collaborative Writing Activities

Collaborative writing activities offer students opportunities to work with a partner, a small group, or the whole class to produce a shared piece of writing.

As with the previous activities, these activities can break the ice. More than that, they help students establish a level of comfort working together to achieve a shared goal – a key dynamic to encourage at the start of any school year.

Snowball Story-Writing

In this simple but fun activity, each student starts by writing the beginning of a story. There should be an allotted amount of time to complete this, the length of which will depend on the age and abilities of the students.

When the allotted time is up, students should stop writing, roll their paper into a ball, and throw it towards the top of the classroom!

Students should then each retrieve one of the ‘snowballs’ from the front of the classroom and, when the timer is started, read the beginning of the story and then write the story middle until the time is up.

Again, the students throw their snowballs to the front of the classroom, before selecting a new snowball to write the ending.

When the stories are completed, they should be returned to the students who wrote the story beginning. This student should write a final draft of the story to ensure it reads well 

Students can then share their stories by reading them out to the class.

Sometimes, students struggle to start their writing. To help them get going, it can be helpful to provide them with a sheet of paper with a writing prompt. This prompt can be a sentence or even a picture.

These prompts can be easily differentiated to suit the age and abilities of your students. For example, more prescriptive prompts are helpful for younger students, while more open-ended prompts will suit older and/or stronger students.

Tapestry Poems

Tapestry poems are a collaboration between two students. So, as a first step, you need to assign each student a partner to work with.

The next step requires you to assign a topic for each pair of students in the class. Each partner then independently writes a 9-line poem on the assigned topic.

When each student has finished their 9-line poem, they share them with their partner.

The task is for the students to work together now to produce an 18-line poem from the two 9-line poems they have created.

To do this, the students must collaborate to make the composite poem work. The idea here is to weave the different threads of the two topic interpretations into a single ‘tapestry’.

Students must include the nine lines of both poems, but they have room to edit for verb tense and make minor grammatical changes to make things work.

The partners must also compromise to agree on a single title for their shared piece.

The Peer Editing Exercise

This is a great way to introduce peer assessment into your classroom, especially with a group of students who are not familiar with the concept.

You will need to explain the editing and proofreading process to the students at the start. The specific criteria will, of course, depend on the age and abilities of your students.

To begin, organize the class into pairs of editing partners. Students should then swap their written work to be edited by their partners.

Any of the previous  writing activities  in this article would serve this purpose well.

Students can edit their partner’s work by annotating with a different colour pen, or, for more detailed commentary, they could use a separate sheet of paper.

Students then share their feedback.

This is an opportunity for students to see each other as resources to help them on their learning journey throughout the year.

It also helps students to develop resilience and an ability to absorb constructive criticism.

Students then rewrite their text in light of the feedback given.

Time for a plenary session should be made at the end to discuss their experiences of the process as a class.

The Summer Yearbook Writing Task

This writing project is based on the idea of school yearbooks.

School yearbooks are compilations of memories, photographs, and quotes. In this version, students compile a compendium based on their collective experiences during the school break.

The format can inspire many writing activities.

Students can gather quotes on the various events of vacation time together. These can be sourced from family, friends, classmates, etc.

They can also collect photographs and write suitable captions for inclusion in the yearbook. The book could include a page for the students’ autographs and a page for summer memories and hopes for the coming year.

Technology can be easily incorporated into this lesson by producing a digital version. Collaborative applications such as Google Drive are perfect for this type of work.

Year Long Inference Based Writing Activities

Tap into the power of imagery in your classroom to get your students to master INFERENCE as AUTHORS and CRITICAL THINKERS .

This YEAR-LONG 500+ PAGE unit is packed with robust opportunities for your students to develop the critical skill of inference through fun imagery, powerful thinking tools, and graphic organizers.

Memory Writing Activities

While we want to avoid the cliched ‘ What I Did This Summer ’ essay, it doesn’t mean that memories of the long holidays can’t serve as an ‘ in’ to some worthwhile writing activities.

In the following writing activities, students will be asked to access their memories of summer to serve as a jumping-off point. Let’s get started!

Paint a Picture With Words

Essentially, this writing activity challenges students to write by employing their senses to evoke a memory.

First, ask the students to choose from a memory of a place they visited during the summer vacation. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a beach trip or a visit to a shopping mall; they’ll both serve equally well for this activity.

Students must then endeavour to recreate the scene as they recall it through careful selection of vocabulary and description.

The main focus of this type of writing will be the use of sensory language. Students should meditate on what they saw, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt while in their chosen place.

Students should work to paint a vivid, multi-dimensional picture in the reader’s minds-eye. For this reason, they should choose a static memory, such as a scene they recall. This activity has more in common with landscape painting than with film-making. A plot is not required.

This activity allows students to hone their descriptive writing skills, which will help them improve their writing in many genres.

Haiku Writing Activity

As with the last activity, this type of poetry is typically focused on evoking a scene. In the case of the haiku, this is usually a natural scene.

Before putting pen to paper, be sure students are suitably familiar with the features of the haiku:

• It consists of 3 lines
• It contains 17 syllables
• The 1st and 3rd lines have 5 syllables and the 2nd line has 7 syllables
• It does not need to rhyme
• It’s usually about nature or a natural phenomenon
• Often has two contrasting or juxtaposed subjects woven into it.

This activity is best introduced by reading and examining a couple of well-written haikus, such as those by Basho in translation, to ensure student familiarity with the form.

This is a very meditative writing form. It is essential to set a suitable mood and atmosphere in the classroom to encourage the necessary concentration and reflection the writing process will require. Playing gentle instrumental music is one way to help achieve this ambience.

Fun Back To School Writing Activities

While the first of our Back to School Writing Activities focuses clearly on breaking the ice and drawing on memories, the primary focus of the following writing activities is on having fun.

These activities will also offer students opportunities to develop some technical aspects of their writing skills; the main emphasis here is on students seeing writing as a fun, creative activity where they have the space and time for self-expression.

Don’t forget to read our complete guide to Fun Writing activities here.

Creative Excuses Writing Task

To start this activity, students must devise a list of 10 chores or tasks they absolutely hate doing.

Next, students should choose four from this list of their most detested tasks and write a letter explaining why they cannot complete them.

Encourage students to get creative with their excuses. The crazier and more imaginative the excuses are, the better. This activity is an opportunity for students to let their imaginations loose.

‘What If?’ Writing Prompts

Writing prompts are an excellent way for students to break through writer’s block. In this activity, students generate their own writing prompts by creating ‘ what if? ’ scenarios for other students in the class to use as writing prompts.

Many of the best and most creative stories start with an inquiry into what would happen if x happened. These scenarios can be silly, serious, fantastical, or humorous if they provide a jumping-off point for the student writer.

When students have completed their prompts, the teacher should gather them to distribute randomly among the class.

Students can share their work with the class When they have finished writing their responses to their assigned prompts. This will be especially interesting for the writer of the original prompt.

The Book Of Summer

This writing activity is an upgrade from the “My Summer Vacation” type essays.

In this activity, each student will compile their Book of Summer,  describing and depicting their holidays using as many different writing genres as possible.

For example, the student might include the following in their Book of Summer:

• A non-chronological report on a day trip
• A comic strip based on a family celebration
• A review of a movie they saw or book they read
• A fictionalized account of their summer
• A recipe of a meal they made
• A playscript for a sleepover they went on
• A haiku on the end of summer

The scope for creative interpretations here is almost endless.

For  younger students , it may be best to be more prescriptive about the various genres to include and the titles for each piece.

But for students with the ability, the open-endedness of this task allows their creativity to run loose while affording you a valuable opportunity to see just what they are capable of.

Be sure to read our complete collection of  back-to-school writing activities.

Fictional Interviews Writing Task

This activity involves a little bit of writing and a lot of role-playing.

In this activity, students should be paired up with a partner. Each partner chooses a fictional character they will role-play. The character can be from any fiction, for example, movies, comic books, or literature.

Partners must prepare and write up a series of interview questions for their partner’s fictional character.

Partners take turns interviewing each other while the interviewee is in character.

This is a great way to bring a bit of drama into the classroom, but if you want to emphasize the writing aspect of the activity, you can set the students up for the interview in the style of a magazine feature article. This will require the student to weave some narrative writing around the back and forth of the questions and answers of the interview.

Write A Story From A Different Point Of View

Narrative writing requires competency in a broad range of complex skills . We can roughly divide those skills into structural ones (such as text organization) and language-related skills (such as sentence construction and creativity).

Getting your  students to write a story  is a great way to assess their abilities in these areas.

In this activity, however, you provide most of the structure for the student, giving them the space to exercise their imagination and a chance to focus on their grammatical control – among other things.

In this exercise, ask your students to select a favourite fairy tale or other traditional story they know well. The student’s task is to rewrite their favourite fairy tale from the point of view of another important character in the story.

For example, they might want to retell the  Jack and the Beanstalk  story from the point of view of the Giant or Jack’s mother.

Retelling  The Ugly Duckling , the student might want to write from Mother Duck’s perspective to explore her feelings about the runt of her litter suddenly transforming into a beautiful (if alien!) swan

Summer Headlines Writing Activity

Headlines are  fun to write .

They should be short and pithy, seizing the reader’s attention by telling them just enough about the story to pique their interest but still leave them wanting to read more.

There are several things that students can do to ensure their headlines have the desired effect, including:

• Choose powerful words designed to make an impact
• Use alliteration to create catchy, snappy headlines
• Employ humour to entertain and intrigue the reader
• Create suspense by posing the headline as a question

For this activity, students should list the main events of their summer break and create a headline for each event.

In this way, the students will have produced an account of their summer written entirely in headlines.

As an extension to this exercise, when they’ve finished producing their headlines, have them present them to the class or in smaller groups.

The best headline is selected from each list, which the student has to turn into a complete newspaper-style article on that event.

Rap and Verse Writing Task

Few genres of writing can be as divisive.

Some are dismayed by the mere mention of the word ‘poetry’ – The “ Why can’t poets just say what they mean? ” camp.

Then, some can barely write a shopping list without a bit of unnecessary versifying.

Love it or loathe it, poetry is on the curriculum and our students need to get to grips with it.

For this activity, students write a series of poems inspired by the events of their summer holidays. Essentially, they are writing a poetic account of their vacation.

To challenge the students, they must use a different type of poetry for each event they wish to retell.

For example, they might write a series of haikus on the weather during the summer break.

Perhaps they’ll produce a calligram or shape poem describing the treehouse they made.

Maybe they’ll write an elegy to a pet that died or a limerick on that disastrous camping trip.

They might like to use the headlines from the previous activity  A Summer in Headlines  as starting points for their poems.

By the end of this activity, your students will have a collection of self-authored poetry they can share with the class in the form of a poetry slam.

You may wish to provide your students with checklists of the various features of the different types of poetry to help them during this activity.

So, there we have seventeen engaging activities to kick start the writing process at the start of the school year.

There is quite a variety from here, with some activities honing technical aspects of the writing process while others are more centred on the fun of creativity.

Remember, at the start of the school year, what the students write isn’t so important, but what they write!

With the selection of activities above, you’re sure to find one to suit even the most pen-shy students!

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Florida State University

FSU | Writing Resources

Writing Resources

The English Department

• College Composition

Ice Breakers

You know what they say about assuming…, would you rather…, alphabet lists—getting to know your classmates, tv personalities: trying on voices, looking beneath the surface.

Purpose of Exercise : To ease students into your classroom and the setting, including having a teacher who is young. This emphasizes stereotyping and assumptions as possibly being inconclusive or false.

Description : Instructor begins with a bit of role-playing and then students are led into a free write about their basic info then introduce themselves to the class.

Suggested Time : about 30 minutes

Procedure : This activity should be done on the first day of class and works well if you can blend in with your students, if just for the day. When you get to your classroom, sit down in a desk with your students. Wait maybe two or three minutes after class begins, ask a few surrounding students if they know anything about the TA and possibly say something to the effect of, “I can’t believe they’re late on the first day!” Wait until about five minutes after then get up and head to the front of class. Typically, this leaves students in shock because they never would have guessed you to be the instructor. Lead into an ice breaker wherein the students have to come up with three interesting things about themselves but they cannot write: their major, where they’re from, their favorite color or the sport they play. After everyone has introduced themselves and said their three things, discuss how we assume so many things about people based on looks or information like major etc. This works well to get them accustomed to the type of writing we do in FYC and the atmosphere we like to create for our classrooms.

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Purpose of Exercise:  The purpose of this exercise is three-fold: to introduce students to each other, to show the variety of experiences and backgrounds each student brings to the classroom community, and to address stereotypes or preconceptions we may have about one another on first meeting.

Description:  Distribute an index card to each student. Ask her or him to write a fact on the card that separates her or him from the rest of the class. This activity will help each student to connect a face to a name and a fun fact.

Suggested Time:  30 minutes

Procedure:  Divide the class in half, and distribute an index card to each student. Have him or her write a fact down that makes them unique: an experience he or she might have had, a talent, a hobby. Alternate between teams in reading the other teams’ cards, and ask each team to guess which member of the opposing team wrote that card. Award one point for each correct guess, and encourage students to elaborate on what they wrote on the card.

Purpose:  This ice breaker is a great activity for students and I have found that it gives students a chance to get to know more about each other and text creativity without having to be forced into group situations that can be uncomfortable on the first day of class.

Suggested Time:  20-35 minutes

Procedure:  You will need to ask the students to either take out a sheet of paper, or you can have slips of paper already prepared for them and pass them out. Then, you ask each person to create a “would you rather” question of his/her own on the slip of paper. Go ahead and lay out any ground rules for the questions. For example, make sure that everyone knows the questions need to be appropriate for the classroom setting. Give them an example of a “would you rather” question (I have copied and pasted some examples from the internet below). Give the students time to come up with questions and write them down. Then, there are a few ways you can go about sharing the questions/answers: 1) you can have the students go around and share their question with the class, and give time for a few responses or 2) you can collect the slips of paper (or sheets of paper) and randomly select ones to read for the class and allow for student responses. This exercise is great for ENC 1000-level courses where students are going to be challenged to be creative and use imagery and detail. Approximately 10-15 minutes should be allotted for explaining the exercises, passing out slips of paper and letting students write down their “would you rather” question. Then, the amount of time you spend going through the questions and getting feedback can vary between 10-20 minutes, depending on how much time you wish to spend on the activity.

Sample “Would You Rather” Questions...

• Would you rather run your tongue down ten feet of a New York City street or press your tongue into a strangers nostril?
• Would you rather be forgotten or hatefully remembered?
• Would you rather have a missing finger or have an extra toe?

Purpose:  The aim of this exercise is to get students to introduce themselves and to initiate collaborative working relationships immediately. It emphasizes writing as a collaborative process that requires input and feedback from others. This exercise works well as an icebreaker in the first week or prior to the first peer workshop.

Description:  Students exchange ideas with each other to complete an informal writing assignment.

Suggested Time:  20 minutes

Procedure:  Ask every student to take out a loose piece of paper and write the letters of the alphabet vertically down the left side of the paper. Next, choose a topic; sometimes I ask students to suggest potential topics or I often simply choose “writing” as a way to start a discussion about it. When you’ve got a topic, give students only one or two minutes to write words they associate with the topic that start with every letter of the alphabet (i.e. for “writing”, A for “argument” etc). When the time limit is up, students will have incomplete alphabets. Next, ask your students to get up and introduce themselves to another student and trade with that person one missing word before moving on to someone else. After some time, students will eventually have completed their alphabets and met almost everyone in the class. Ask for a few volunteers to read their alphabet lists. At this point, I often talk about how writing is a collaborative endeavor and segue into an explanation of the peer workshop.

Purpose: T his icebreaker makes a great first day introduction, getting students interested in and excited about writing by exploring well-known TV voices and personally interesting topics.

Description:  All you need is a whiteboard, and your class will need paper and pen. This discussion and exercise gets students thinking about who they see in the media, and analyzing what makes those people/characters what they are by mimicking those elements unique to their TV “voice.”

Suggested Time:  15 – 20 minutes

Procedure:  Start out by asking the class if they like writing. You’ll probably get a roomful of “Noooos!” Ask them if they ever write on their own. Again, most will insist “Never!” Then, of course, exclaim “Excellent!” Throw them for a loop. Ask them if they ever email anybody, or use IM – isn’t this writing? This should cause a bit of a shift in classroom thought, so take the opportunity to have the students come-up with a topic – any topic – that they’ve been dealing with in their first days at FSU and that they might IM, email, or text about. You might write some on the board, and choose from among these, or get a group consensus on one topic. For example, if someone yells out, “Parking!” go with that.

Then ask the class to come-up with some different TV/Movie Personas to add to the board in another column: The Terminator, Paris Hilton, etc – you can throw in something off-the-wall, like Wylie Cayote. When you’ve got about 3 or so characters down, set the students to writing about their chosen situation at FSU from the perspective of EACH character, one at a time, in 2-4 minute shifts. Encourage them to write in the ‘voice’ of that character - how would that person/think talk, think and behave?

By the end of the exercise, the students should have 3 brief descriptions of a single situation in 3 different voices. Take some time to share a few, depending on the time that you have. Discuss how writing offers us the opportunity to explore our own, and various other voices, as well as those topics that are most important to us in ways that may be further-reaching than text, IM, or email.

Purpose of Exercise:  This exercise accompanies “In Case You Ever Want To Go Home Again” by Barbara Kingsolver (published in  On Writing ). It is designed to ask students to apply specific parts of the reading to their own lives and examine their experiences beyond surface-level.

Description:  This exercise engages students in conversation with one another about personal topics, but it allows them to do so without the risk involved in sharing “too much.” Sometimes students are shy to share in class because they don’t want to reveal too much of themselves; however, this exercise allows them to be personal while maintaining some distance. Kingsolver’s essay is an excellent starting point for personal engagement in the classroom, especially for first-year students who have just recently left their homes.

Suggested Time:  50 minutes

Procedure: Have the students read “In Case You Ever Want To Go Home Again” before class. In class, show the following quotes and writing prompts on the projector. Read through each quote and prompt as a class, and then give the students 15-20 minutes to think about and write a personal response to one of the quotes/prompts. Collect the papers and read some of the responses out loud anonymously. Use the student responses as the basis for a conversation about surface-level perceptions, the truth behind situations, and honesty.

Additional Information:  Below are the quotes and writing prompts:

  “It’s human, to want the world to see us as we think we ought to be seen” (Kingsolver 471). 

•   If the world could see you, your families, your memories as they authentically are on the inside, what would they see? Would this be different than the “you” shown on the outside?

“Imagine singing at the top of your lungs in the shower as you always do, then one day turning off the water and throwing back the curtain to see there in your bathroom a crowd of people, rapt, with videotape. I wanted to throw a towel over my head” (Kingsolver 472). 

•   If the world read your personal journal, what would it find? Would people be surprised? Embarrassed? Upset? Happy?

“I had written: ‘Pittman was 20 years behind the nation in practically every way you can think of except the rate of teenage pregnancies…we were the last place in the country to get the dial system. Up until 1973, you just picked up the receiver and said, Marge, get me my Uncle Roscoe…I’ve photographed my hometown in its undershirt” (Kingsolver 473).

•   What is the real description of your hometown? (Not the “Visitor’s Guide” description) What do only people who live in your hometown know about it? How do the insiders describe it? What does your hometown look like it its “undershirt?”

“I was a bookworm who never quite fit her clothes. I managed to look fine in my school pictures, but as usual the truth lay elsewhere” (Kingsolver 474). 

•   What is the truth behind your photographs? Choose one specific picture and tell us what people see and then the truth behind it.

“Before the book signing was over, more than one of my old schoolmates had sidled up and whispered: ‘That Lou Ann character, the insecure one? I know you based her on me” (Kingsolver 476). 

• Do we all have insecurities and uncertainties? Do we consider other people’s insecurities or just our own? Do we try to hide our insecurities from other people, and why or why not?

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August 12, 2022 CG Writing Lessons 9-12 , CG Writing Lessons K-5 , CG Writing Lessons 6-8 , ELA K-5 , ELA Seasonal Back to School , ELA 6-8 , ELA Resources - Activities , ELA Focus - Writing , ELA 9-12 , Core Grammar

Back-to-school writing prompts [includes printable worksheets], by: tiffany rehbein.

Use simple back-to-school writing prompts to assess writing skills and learn important information about each student in your room!

Individual Back-To-School Writing Prompts

Writing assessment comes in many forms, and here are 10 prompts to get your students writing.

Write about going back to school after summer vacation.

Five years from now I will be …

Write a list of 10 things that make you feel good.

Describe your favorite day.

Tell about your favorite weather.

Describe an outdoor game you like to play.

Imagine that you are an animal in the zoo.  What type of animal are you?  How do you feel about your home in the zoo?  How do you feel about people that visit and watch you?

If you could visit any place, where would it be and why?

Draw yourself as a superhero. Write about the personality traits you would have.

As I approached the school on the first day, I saw …

If you would like to extend these writing prompts, download my Letter Writing Prompt Activity . With this activity students will pick a prompt and then write a letter about that topic. Have students practice writing a draft and revising, for a nice, clean final copy. Then instruct students to use the letter template in the Letter Writing Prompt Activity to write their final draft. These final letters can be posted in the classroom or hallway to celebrate your student's writing.

Collaborative Back-to-School Writing Prompts

Using small groups or the whole class, here’s a fun way to write collaboratively!

Each student needs a pencil and a piece of paper that is out of their notebook

Post As I approached the school on the first day, I saw … on the overhead projector or white board

Have each student write the opener and add to it. You can put a time limit on the writing or a quantitative number (e.g., write 3-5 sentences)

After they have written, have the students pass their paper to the person in front of them

Students will read the new paper and add to it (again with a time or sentence limit)

Repeat steps 4 and 5 based on your time frame

Write a conclusion! At this point, you will have an introduction and some body paragraphs. To reinforce writing conclusions, verbally tell the students to write a solid conclusion, wrapping up the story.

Have one student read the story to the entire class to share the creative event!

These back-to-school writing prompts build classroom community, gives students an opportunity to write in an engaging, collaborative manner, and gives you valuable feedback to you about each student’s writing.

Additional Back-to-School Writing Ideas

Don't forget to check out my Who Are You? Writing Prompt . This is a great worksheet to use occasionally throughout the year to show your students you are always interested in their interests... not just during the first few weeks of class.

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Looking for additional writing prompts you can use throughout the year? Below are three downloads that will be great additions to your teaching tool kit.

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Writing Across the Curriculum

Supporting writing in and across the disciplines at City Tech

“It’s in the Syllabus”: Best Practices for the First Day of Class

As instructors begin to look forward to the next semester and plan their course calendars, I’d like to share some thoughts on how to spend the first day of class. In my time at City Tech, I had the pleasure of attending City Tech’s new faculty orientation, led by Professor  Julia Jordan,   as well as learning from Dr.  Rebecca Mazumdar , one of the co-coordinators of WAC and an Associate Professor in the English department. Both mentors, albeit at different times, implored me: “Please, please do not spend the first class session reading your syllabus to your students.” As Dr. Mazumdar added, “If my courses are not, in fact, lecture courses—why would I spend the first class lecturing my students?”

Before learning from these women, that’s how I spent all my first class sessions. As professors, we know we have to convey how important this document is to students, that it’s a contract where students can find most, if not all, of the important course expectations, objectives, policies, and assignment due dates. We want to ensure that students have heard this information and leave with an understanding of what will be expected of them over the course of the semester.

We also know, as professors, that standing in front of a classroom reading from a document is poor pedagogy. Over the seven years I’ve been teaching at the college level, I have consistently heard colleagues complaining that students don’t read or refer to or  know  the syllabus. Most CUNY faculty I know also pride themselves on student-centered learning and how they work to engage and involve students in the classroom, but the first day of class sets the tone for the entire semester. If we stand up in front of our students and read the syllabus to them, are we really teaching them how to refer to important documents for information? That we expect them to do so? We know students don’t magically retain 100% of lecture material after any given class, so why do we expect them to know our syllabus after we review it once?

Instead, professors might begin to think through ways in which they can ensure students practice the skills required to read, refer to, and engage with professional documents over the course of the semester, instead of having students spend the first day of class checking their watches, hoping to get out early.

Here are a few of my own ideas on more generative ways to spend the first class session, that set the tone for a semester of engaged, collaborative learning:

• Assign your syllabus as a reading assignment, and quiz students on it at the beginning of the next class session, as Dr. Mazumdar does in her classes. After quizzing students on the syllabus individually, put them into groups and let them help each other answer the quiz questions, collaborating and learning how to seek information about the course from each other as well as their instructor. Make sure, too, that the quiz gets students writing, asking at least one short answer question as opposed to multiple choice or T/F questions.
• Assigning your syllabus as required reading leaves room on the first day to focus, instead, on another activity that better reflects what class time will look like in the weeks ahead: an interactive lecture, a freewrite, or filling out a questionnaire that asks students to respond to questions in detailed, reflective ways (here’s my first day  student questionnaire  from the writing course I teach themed around dream interpretation).
• A group activity. As a writing instructor, I’ve designed a group activity around learning the differences between an em dash, en dash, and hyphen. Students must use these quirky punctuation marks, correctly, in three sentences describing things they have in common as group members. This exercise allows them to get to know one another, but also to practice focused discussion; they must figure out which commonalities lend themselves to the drama of the em dash; the numbers that usually surround an en dash; and what compound modifiers they might share as a group in order to use a hyphen. They are also learning how to incorporate sophisticated punctuation marks into their writing.

Full disclosure:  I hated group activities when I was an undergraduate. I wanted to sit in my seat, usually at the front of the classroom, and be a good student all on my own. The reality is, however, that learning is a collaborative process, and I wish that more professors had called me out on my superiority complex. I often tell my students—you have something to learn from each one of your peers, listen to one another.

• At the very least, allow for five minutes at the end of class to have students write, on a cue card or piece of paper you collect, one question or concern they have about the course after reviewing the syllabus on the first day. I like to also ask students to articulate in writing what they are most excited about after the first day of class. This is a good practice, in general, after any class session, in order to find out what needs review and what students are taking away from your teaching. You’ll get a sense of your students as writers, as well—the more small, informal, in-class writing samples you can collect and read quickly, the more of a sense you’ll have of each writer’s voice. I always tell my students, because I read so much of their informal in-class writing, I’m able to spot plagiarism immediately. I recognize their voices on paper and miss them when they disappear in formal assignments. Let your students know from day one you listen, you hear them, and model the kind of reflective practice that allows for lifelong learning.

For more on designing a course schedule that incorporates WAC principles, visit our Digital Initiative website and take our “Developing Your WI Syllabus” workshop online! (And enjoy your summer!)

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Teaching Commons > Teaching Guides > Learning Activities > The First Day

The First Day of Class

Before the Course Begins

A few days before your class begins, consider sending your students an email and posting a News item in your course; briefly introduce yourself and let students know what to expect on the first day of class. If you’re teaching online, you can also use this as an opportunity to remind students of the course modality and meeting schedule (if applicable).

Introduce Yourself

An effective introduction helps you establish a welcoming tone and a professional yet approachable presence. Consider how your enthusiasm for the course and discipline can positively impact students’ attitudes as well. 

In your introduction, consider sharing the following: 

• What do you love about teaching the course? How long have you been teaching? What is your favorite thing about teaching?
• Why did you choose to study and work in your discipline? What do you love about the discipline? How you see the discipline affecting the world and vice versa?
• What is your research agenda and how does it relate to the course? (if applicable)
• Personal details that you feel comfortable sharing, such as place of birth, family details, hobbies and interests, future plans.

If you’re asking students to engage in an icebreaker or diagnostic activity, consider providing your own response to the activity or prompt.

Course Introduction Video

Especially if you’re working with your students asynchronously, consider building some of these elements into a pre-recorded course introduction video. Panopto is one tool you can use for recording and sharing that video. In addition to the course introduction elements above, you might also 

• Explain how your course will be delivered and how students should navigate your D2L course each week 
• Point out important areas of the D2L course and explain their function in the context of your class (e.g., if you plan to regularly provide students with feedback via Submission folders, show them the ways they can access that feedback) 
• Emphasize how students can connect with you synchronously, via office hours and any other opportunities for one-on-one meetings or collaboration (e.g., optional group study sessions, individual conferences) 

Using video to introduce yourself to students can help students get to know your personality and better perceive your enthusiasm for the course and subject matter.

At the beginning of Spring 2020, the University shared a video that included clips from many instructors' introductory videos. You'll notice that these are nothing fancy: just faculty members speaking into a camera and connecting authentically with students. 

Ask Your Students to Introduce Themselves

Before the first class, review your roster to begin learning about your students. On the first day, use some of the time to get to know your students personally and academically.

Learn and Use Students’ Names

Learning the names of your students is often cited as a simple way to create an inclusive environment in your classroom. It shows your students you care and helps to foster a sense of community. Furthermore, 

researchers have found that knowing student names helps improve student perceptions of instructors and their courses. It’s also one way, James Lang argues , to get and hold students’ attention.  See 3 Simple Ways to Learn Your Students’ Names and Learning Students’ Names for practical tips for learning and remembering names.

Collect Information via a First Day Survey 

A first day survey is one way to collect information about your students. 

• Here are some things you might ask students to provide:
• Name and pronouns
• Context (hours spent working, childcare responsibilities, etc.)
• Prior knowledge/experience
• Technological proficiency
• Personal goals for taking course 

First Day or Pre-Course Survey Question Examples

Pronouns and name.

You might begin your survey by asking students to share their name and pronouns. One way to do this is to model: 

My name is Abigail Wagner and you can refer to me as Abigail or Professor Wagner. I use she/her/hers pronouns. What is your name and what pronouns do you use? 

You might also ask students to share a phonetic spelling or a recording of their name. 

Students’ Academic Backgrounds, Goals, and Needs

• Why are you taking this course?
• What are your academic and/or professional goals?
• What is your greatest academic strength?
• What is one thing you hope to do or learn during this course?
• What previous experience do you have ______?
• What challenges do you anticipate in this course?
• What else should I know in order to best support you in this course?

Students’ Interests Outside of Class

• What is your favorite song or musical artist?
• What is the best book you’ve read recently?
• What is your favorite movie?
• What is your favorite food or meal? Can you share a recipe?

Responses to fun questions can later be used to build community in the class. For example, you might create a playlist of students’ favorite songs or compile and share their movie, book, or recipe suggestions.

See a comparison of survey tools  available at DePaul to determine the best tool for your first day survey. 

Assess Students’ Previous Knowledge

It is often beneficial to assess students’ previous knowledge and misconceptions about a course topic. This will help us better understand what knowledge students bring to the course and frame our teaching strategies around their needs. 

Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATS) are well-suited for gathering this information,  (see especially Background Knowledge Probe, Focused Listing, and Concept Maps). " How to Assess Students’ Prior Knowledge " from Carnegie Mellon University also addresses how instructors can build on or actively counteract students' assumptions, previous knowledge, and ways of evaluating evidence.

Introduce the Course

Introduce the purpose and application of the course. Presenting it in the context of its discipline, students’ lives, and the world at large can help motivate students. You might even consider telling a story to grab their attention. The story could be borrowed from history, could pose an ethical or moral dilemma, or illustrate a vexing problem that your course will address.

Strategies for Introducing Your Course

Establish relevance.

Use a current event to demonstrate why the content of the course, or the skills students will acquire throughout the course, matters. 

Address Big Takeaways

Identify the big takeaways that you hope your students will have, not just after completing your course, but many years later.

Describe Transferable Skills

Explain what students will be able to do (or do better) by the end of the course. Describe how those skills might be applied to other contexts. 

Present a Paradox

Bennett (2004) suggests presenting an interesting question or paradox in the field. Have students discuss the question in pairs or groups, and then report their thoughts to the whole class. Discuss different viewpoints, possible solutions, and how the course will address or return to this problem or paradox. 

You could also collect answers to these questions using Poll Everywhere or in a   D2L discussion .

Share the Syllabus

A well constructed syllabus shows clear direction, goals, and planning for a course. Provide a digital copy of your syllabus to students before the first class. On the first day, highlight and review key components and important policies. To ensure that students have closely read the syllabus and understand each element, consider having students:

• complete a syllabus scavenger hunt, in which students are asked to find specific pieces of information from the syllabus;
• work in groups to present different parts of the syllabus to the entire class;
• take a low-stakes syllabus quiz (this is often used in online classes);
• or work in groups to write 2 or 3 questions about the course that are not covered in the syllabus.

Syllabus Quiz

You can use a syllabus quiz to reinforce important policies and to set clear expectations with students. Some syllabus quiz questions might address things like 

• Expectations for participation
• How to navigate the course and/or prepare for class sessions
• How to access and use office hours 
• Grading and feedback timelines 
• Late work policies 

A syllabus quiz can be facilitated via Poll Everywhere , Zoom polling , and D2L Quizzes . To keep the quiz low-stakes, consider allowing unlimited attempts or collecting anonymous answers. If many students answer a question incorrectly, consider reviewing that information with students.  

Syllabus Speed Dating 

Syllabus speed dating is one way to introduce your syllabus and encourage students to engage with each other. Maryellen Weimer, writing in Faculty Focus , describes a professor who uses this method; Karen Eifler, an education professor at the University of Portland, designed this activity. 

“Two rows of chairs face each other (multiple rows of two can be used in larger classes). Students sit across from each other, each with a copy of the syllabus that they’ve briefly reviewed. Eifler asks two questions: one about something in the syllabus and one of a more personal nature. The pair has a short period of time to answer both questions. Eifler checks to make sure the syllabus question has been answered correctly. Then students in one of the rows move down one seat and Eifler asks the new pair two different questions. Not only does this activity get students acquainted with each other, it’s a great way to get them reading the syllabus and finding out for themselves what they need to know about the course.”

Have Students Communicate with One Another: Icebreakers

To begin creating a learning community, students need to communicate with one another. Icebreakers are one way to encourage communication between students. Icebreakers are commonly thought of as just "getting-to-know-you" activities, but they can also serve as a useful inflection point to help your students transition into a learning frame of mind.

Icebreaker Examples 

Most of the examples below come from a larger list of icebreakers created by Lansing Community College's Center for Teaching Excellence and The University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and Arts’ list of 3 icebreakers .

Something You Want to Learn

Have students complete a form or write on a whiteboard with spaces for "something you already know about the subject," "something you want to learn," and "something that could happen in this class that would make it possible to learn what you need to learn." Have each student introduce themself and share something from the form. 

This activity could also be facilitated via Google Docs or  Microsoft 365

Familiar and Unique

Break the class into groups of four. Each small group must come up with four things they have in common (all working full-time, all single parents, etc.). Then they are asked to share something unique about themselves individually. The group shares their familiar and unique features with the rest of the class. A master list can be made on the board for the class to look at and discuss if appropriate. (This idea is adapted from Victoria Meyers at Grand Rapids Community College in Michigan.)

This activity could also be facilitated via Zoom breakout rooms  or D2L Group Discussions

Two Truths and a LIe

Give each student a notecard and ask them to write three statements about themselves: one statement should be false, and two should be true. Explain that the goal is to fool people about which one is false. Have each person read their statements and have the group guess the lie. 

If you are teaching a large class, you can break students into smaller groups for two truths and a lie activity. Then, after each group has guessed, ask students to introduce their group members to the whole class. 

This activity could also be facilitated via Zoom .

Paired Interviews

Break students into pairs. Ask students to interview their partner. They can start by learning their partner’s name, major, and where they’re from. Add in other questions and prompts that help students to engage with your subject matter and learn more about their partner. Here are some examples:

• If we were to find ourselves in your hometown, what’s the one thing you’d say we absolutely had to do before we left?
• If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?
• What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?

After students interview their partner, they should introduce their partner to another set of partners or to the whole class. This activity helps to encourage good listening skills.

This activity could also be facilitated via Zoom breakout rooms.

Favorite Thing

Ask students to share a recent discovery that has become one of their new favorite things (e.g., a snack, podcast, brand of socks, exercise routine, nature preserve, etc.). Give students time to find a picture or link to help share their new favorite thing with the class.

This activity could be facilitated in small groups and works well in Zoom breakout rooms  or  D2L Group Discussions .

Icebreakers in Asynchronous Online and Flex Modality Courses

Incorporate icebreakers throughout the course.

Icebreakers are commonly thought of as just "getting-to-know-you" activities, but they can also serve as a useful inflection point to help your students transition into a learning frame of mind. So, you might periodically begin a class session, or a new module or week, with an icebreaker.  Polling  is a good way to incorporate getting-to-know you activities at the start of synchronous class sessions. D2L Discussions ,  collaborative documents  (e.g., Google Docs), and Microsoft Teams  can be used in asynchronous online courses. 

Engage Students in Active Learning

In “How to Teach a Good First Day of Class, ” James Lang emphasizes the importance of asking students to do something on the first day in order to set expectations for participation and to spark learning and enthusiasm. The following strategies are also another way to encourage students to communicate with each other. 

Model Future Class Sessions

The first class meeting is a good time to let students know what to expect in terms of the types of activities that they will be doing for the rest of the quarter. One way to do this is to organize a first day activity that models how future class sessions will be conducted. These are some examples of how you might model future class sessions: 

• Ask students to read a short excerpt of text and analyze or discuss it in small groups 
• Provide students with a problem and ask them to solve it
• Give students a short case study and ask them to map how they would approach it
• Facilitate a short lab that helps students to see best practices for using the space 

Poetry Course Example

Divide a short poem (or poems) into 5 or 6 parts. Have students form small groups of 5 or 6. Give each student one or two lines from a short poem. Have students read their lines aloud to their group, and then have them reassemble the poem together. The group then discusses and decides on the meaning of the reconstructed poem. (Erickson & Strommer, 1991, p. 90)

Multiculturalism Course Example

Give students 3 minutes to write down the 5 most important historical events or alternatively important people in history. Group students together to create a list of up to 10 “most importants” that they agree on, giving them 10 minutes. Poll each group noting their responses on the board or projector. Determine trends in the list, are the events or people modern if not very recent, are they most American or European, are they primarily political or military. Use the list to guide student reflection about their world views, the limits of those views, and how the course is designed to expand their socio-cultural understandings. (Erickson & Strommer, 1991, p. 90-91)

Asynchronous Online Courses

If you’re teaching asynchronously, you can use the first week of your course to model how weeks or modules of your courses will be organized. If you plan to regularly use certain activities, assessments, or assignments, consider asking students to complete a low-stakes version during the first week of the course. As an added bonus, this will give students an opportunity to test out the technology tools.

Ask Students to Think About the Course Metacognitively

• What study, learning, writing, composing, etc. strategies have worked for you in the past? What strategies haven’t worked? 
• What elements and actions contribute to a productive learning environment? 
• What skills must you learn in order to be successful in this class or in a profession related to this field? 

This activity could also be facilitated in Zoom breakout rooms or D2L Group Discussions . See Activities for Metacognition for additional prompts and resources.

References and Further Resources

Bennett, K. (2004). How to start teaching a tough course . College Teaching, 52 (3), 106-106.

Case, K., Bartsch, R., McEnery, L., Hall, S., Hermann, A., & Foster, D. (2008). Establishing a comfortable classroom from day one: Student perceptions of the reciprocal interview . College Teaching, 56 (4), 210-214. 

Erickson, B. L., & Strommer, D. W. (1991). Teaching college freshmen . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Lang, J. (2020). Distracted Minds: 3 Ways to Get Their Attention in Class . The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Lang, J. (2008). On Course: A week-by-week guide to your first semester of college teaching . Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Lang, J. (2019). How to Teach a Good First Day of Class. The Chronicle of Higher Education.

" Make the Most of the First Day of Class " from the Carnegie Mellon Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence. 

Nilson, L. (2003). Teaching at its best: A research-based resource for college instructors (2nd ed.). Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing.

" The First Day of Class " from Carleton College’s Science Education Resource Center. 

First Day Writing Assignment - CCSS: 3 Topics

• Easel Activity

Description

Since writing is an integral part of my teaching, I like to obtain an idea of each student's writing skills the very first day of school in September. Once we review the Syllabus for the class, I give students this assignment.

Not only does it help me to gauge how to focus the writing elements we will need to cover, but it also serves as a smooth transition for the students from the summer break to the new school year.I also like how this assignment gets the students thinking in an analytic manner, as the ability to think and analyze is another basic element of my teaching.

As always, this activity- PDF version- may be downloaded and printed  for classroom use . Also, an Easel Activity is ready to be used  for Google Classroom.  Teachers may choose to add an interactive layer of their own for digital use by clicking on the red "Open in Easel" rectangle on the product's page.

For more ideas to “Start Strong,” check out

Back to School Forms: Teaching Lifesavers-Twelve Classroom Management Forms

Back to School Forms:Back to School Assortment of First Day Forms and Activities

Back to School Freebie- Teacher CLASSMART List

For all of these and so much more, check out this 109-page packet:

Product/CLASS-MATTERS-Planning-Teaching-and-Managing-Secondary-Classrooms-

And this terrific help for writing college application recommendations:

Recommendations: How to Write Recommendation Letters for College Applications

More First Day writing ideas

Writing Activities (First Day) - What About Me?

Writing Activity: The Me I Want You to Know

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OSU Center for Teaching and Learning

Start Strong: Tips for an Effective First Day of Class

The first day of class sets the tone for the rest of the semester (Lang, 2019; Saucier 2019). Also, the first day of class comes with some nervousness, “first-day jitters,” even for experienced university teachers. There are several instructional tips for ensuring that the first day gets off to a good start. Lang encapsulates them into four productive principles for striking the right cord with students on the first day of class: Curiosity, Community, Learning and Expectations.

While it is important to direct students’ attention to course policies, assessments and assignments on the first day of class, this activity should not be the centerpiece of the first day class. Setting a good feeling tone for the class on the first day requires that the instructor endeavor to whet students’ appetite and spark their curiosity for the course content first, before even handling out the syllabus. The principle of curiosity is reminiscent of the function of the anticipatory set in lesson planning; the purpose is to hook students, grab their attention and intentionally invite them to participate in a stimulating intellectual journey. Effective strategies for generating student curiosity for the course encompass the following:

§       Reflect on what first fascinated you about the subject matter or discipline. Share your reflection with students.

§       Connect the core knowledge that will be presented in the content of the course with real life experiences of students today.

§       Communicate to students why the content of the course is significant and relevant to them and to life outside the classroom.

In other words, share your sweet spot of the content of the course with students on the first day of class.

The instructor is definitely not the only one going through first day jitters. The first day of class is a roller-coaster of emotions for students too. They are encumbered with anxieties about time, finances and other personal commitments. It is essential to implement activities that will foster a sense of community and make the classroom an inviting atmosphere for each student right from Day 1. Lang (2019) describes the intellectual journey of facilitating student learning in a semester-long course as a “caravan journey.” As the leader of the caravan, it is the instructor’s responsibility to make sure that each student is empowered to function as a successful co-constructor of the learning experiences that will be produced in the course.  Effective approaches for getting everyone fully on board beginning from day one include the following:

§       Get to class early . Greet students as they come in. Walk around, talk to as many students as you can, ask for their names and other bits of information such as their hometown, major, class level. Use humor; humanize yourself to the students, tell them that you are glad to have them in class for the semester.

§       Introduce yourself effectively “as a unique person sharing the classroom with other unique individuals” (https://cft.vanderbilt.edu). Consider sharing succinct and pertinent information about your personal biography, educational and intellectual biography.

§       Tell them why you have chosen your area of expertise and a little bit about any relevant current or future research project(s). Convey your enthusiasm for teaching and learning to students.

§       Give students the opportunity to introduce themselves. Instead of the usual format of individual introductions, divide students into pairs or small groups and have them complete a simple task that will allow them to get to know each other in the context of the course material.

§        Make it personal . In a chemistry class, the instructor may ask students to introduce themselves and exchange information about how chemistry enriches their everyday lives. Have pairs or members of small group introduce their peers and the information that they exchanged to the rest of the class.

Humanizing yourself to students and getting them into pairs or small groups to introduce themselves in the context of course material sets the tone for the kind of interaction they should expect from you. Furthermore, it sets the tone for the kind of involvement and engagement you will expect from them throughout the semester. This is the essence of cultivating a positive and welcoming classroom environment from Day1.

Learning in the course should not be suspended until the second class meeting. Part of whetting students’ appetite about the course is to engage them in a cognitive task related to course material on the first day. A lecture is not recommended. Instead, use an activity such as the Background Knowledge Probe (BKP) questionnaire to uncover students’ assumptions about the content of the course and also, to document pre-post knowledge gains. On the first day, give students a challenging task for example a few multiple-choice or short answer questions similar to what they will encounter on the mid-term or the final examination. Students will respond to each question with one of the following codes:

1.       I don’t even recognize the content of this question.

2.       I can’t answer the question but know where I can look it up.

3.       I know the answer to this question.

4.       I know the answer and could give at least one example.

5.       I know this well enough to teach my classmates about it (Baker, n.d.).

Upon completion of the BPK questionnaire, students can work together in pairs or small groups to discuss the test items, review the pages in the textbook or other course learning material to identify the information related to each item. The purpose of learning on the first day is to inform the instructor about the levels of students’ understanding. This knowledge should help to shape instruction in the ensuing weeks. At the same time, students’ participation in a BPK classroom assessment activity should help to heighten their awareness of the content areas of the course where they need to dedicate more study time.

EXPECTATIONS

The principles of curiosity, community and learning are guidelines for creating a lively learning environment and engaging students in learning on the first day. However, it is apparent that students will come to the classroom with a lot of expectations about the requirements of the class, course materials, assignments and course policies. Students will want to have a comprehensive response to the question: what do I need to do to be successful in this class? Therefore, it is important that some portion of the first day is allotted to delineating the expectations of the class with respect to the following:

§       Explain the reasoning that informed the structure of the course.

§       Highlight the learning objectives and how they are aligned with assessments and the instructional strategies.

§       Communicate instructor responsibilities with regard to the availability of in-class material, feedback on assignments, provide information about office hours, and how you wish to be contacted by phone, email.

§        Explain students’ responsibilities for example class attendance, absences, submission of assignments, accommodations for special needs.

Students should receive copies of the syllabus online through the learning management system before the first day. It is not productive to read the syllabus in class; highlighting the major parameters of the course should suffice. You may give students a no-points syllabus quiz to ensure that they have good understanding of the most important requirements of the course.

It is a good idea to close the presentation of the requirements of the course with a statement of commitment to student learning and success in the course. Encourage students and communicate to them that you are confident that they will be successful in the course if they expend the required effort (https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/teach/firstday.html).

Lang (2019) affirms that successful implementation of the four principles requires that the following practicable observations must be accomplished in advance before the first day:

§       Go over the class roster and match students’ names with their pictures (if pictures are provided in the in the university’s learning management system). In addition, post a warm welcome message to students, introduce yourself and ask students to introduce themselves to you and to the class.

§       Familiarize yourself with the classroom space and available technology. Observe the space, closely taking note of how the tables and chairs are arranged.

§       Visualize how the space matches the kinds of learning activities that will take place in your course and plan to make adjustments as needed.

§       Test the technology in the classroom and make sure that technological issues are resolved before, not on the first day of class.

The preceding information may seem like a lot to take in and accomplish before or on the first day. However, it is pertinent to reiterate that the first day sets the tone for the rest of the semester. Taking time upfront to stimulate students’ curiosity, foster a sense of community, establish learning, address the expectations of the class and get familiar with the classroom space and technology should yield successful learning experiences dividends in the long run.

Baker, M.  (n.d.). Using background knowledge probes. Retrieved from https://ctl.byu.edu/tip/using-background-knowledge-probes

Center for Teaching (n.d.). First day of class. Retrieved from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu

Eberly Center Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation. (n.d.). Make the most of the first  day. Retrieved from https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/teach/firstday.html

Lang, J. M. (2019). How to teach a good first day class. The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Retrieved from https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/advice-firstday

Saucier, D. (2019). Bringing peace to the classroom. Faculty Focus. Retrieved from

Funmi Amobi is an instructional consultant and College Liaison in Oregon State University’s Center for Teaching and Learning . Funmi provides consultations to faculty in individual and small group settings to support teaching excellence and student success. Funmi holds a doctorate degree in secondary education with major emphasis in curriculum and instruction from Arizona State University.  As a reflective practitioner, she is a life-long student of the scholarship of teaching and learning.

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Center for Teaching

First day of class.

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The first day of class is your opportunity to present your vision of the class to prospective students. It is helpful if you can introduce yourself as a scholar and educator and provide insight into how you will teach the class and what you will expect them to contribute to the learning process.

Consider that several of your students may be “shopping” for a schedule the first week of classes. They may be looking for a class that will fill a particular time slot, include a particular learning environment (i.e. lab-based or lecture style), or a class with a certain workload to balance the demands of their other courses and extra-curricular responsibilities. Thus, students will appreciate a clear roadmap of what you will require of them over the course of the semester. You may also want to model, as specifically as possible, the classroom environment you intend to foster during the class. For example, if they will spend a good deal of time doing group work over the course of the semester, you may want to break them into groups the first day.

• The Inviting Classroom
• Course Expectations and Requirements
• Additional Resources

Summary Checklist

Welcoming: how to create an inviting classroom.

“Professors who established a special trust with their students often displayed the kind of openness in which they might, from time to time, talk about their intellectual journey, its ambitions, triumphs, frustrations, and failures, and encourage students to be similarly reflective and candid.”

–From the chapter “How Do They Treat Their Students” in Ken Bain’s  What the Best College Teachers Do (Harvard Press, 2004), available in the  CFT Library

Introduce Yourself

The point of an introduction is to establish yourself as a unique individual sharing the classroom with other unique individuals. Other than providing your name and the name of the course you’re teaching, here is some information you may consider sharing:

• Personal biography: your place of birth, family history, educational history, hobbies, sport and recreational interests, how long you have been at the university, and what your plans are for the future.
• Educational biography: how you came to specialize in your chosen field, a description of your specific area of expertise, your current projects, and your future plans.
• Teaching biography: how long have you taught, how many subjects/classes have you taught, what level of class you normally teach, what you enjoy about being in the classroom, what do you learn from your students, and what you expect to teach in the future.
• In making your decision about what information to share, consider how much you want them to know and how much you want to reveal about yourself.

Allow the Students to Introduce Themselves

This is your opportunity to focus on students as unique and diverse individuals. Consider how introductions can lead into a productive and welcoming classroom environment. Instead of just asking general questions concerning their name, major, and years at Vanderbilt, ask them questions that are pertinent to the subject and the atmosphere you want to build through the semester. Here are some examples:

• In a geography or history class, you may want to ask students to introduce themselves and explain where they are from. You could mark these places on a map of the world as they talk.
• In a math class, you may want to ask the students to introduce themselves and state one way mathematics enriches their lives every day.
• You may also want to have the students break into pairs, exchange information, and introduce one another to the class.

This may also be a good time to give your students an exercise that enables teachers to assess the state of their students’ previous or current learning. Examples of these Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) can be found on our Web site, but include the following.

• The Background Knowledge Probe is a short, simple questionnaire given to students at the start of a course, or before the introduction of a new unit, lesson or topic. It is designed to uncover students’ pre-conceptions about the area of study.

Discuss and Evaluate the Room Environment Together

As your students are introducing themselves and you are talking to them, ask your students to comment on the acoustics and remain conscious of how well you can hear and see each of them. Consider, with their input or alone, how you would change and optimize the seating arrangement. At the end of the introductions, ask them to move to optimize communication and make note of unexpected needs for a microphone, lighting changes, seating arrangements or other environmental controls.

Truth in Advertising: Course Expectations and Requirements

“What happens between you and your students in your classroom or lecture hall depends largely on what you want to happen. How you treat each other and how you and your students feel about being in that place with each other is modeled and influenced by you.”

–From the chapter “Classroom Contracts–Roles, Rules, and Expectations” in David W. Champagne’s  The Intelligent Professor’s Guide to Teaching (Roc Edtech, 1995), available in the  CFT Library

• Course overview: Provide a map of where the class will start and end, and what you expect them to understand at the end of the semester. See the  Course Design page for resources on creating and summarizing course goals.
• Departmental Requirements/Expectations : If your department sets standards and requirements, you may want to establish that you are required to work within those parameters. Vanderbilt Teaching Assistants may want to refer to  Questions TAs Might Ask Their Supervisors for assistance understanding this information. This may be the best time to discuss  Vanderbilt University’s Honor System .
• Presentation of material : Tell your students how you will provide them with the materials they need to be successful in class. Do you post Web-based materials on Brightspace , or rely on electronic course reserves through the Library? Will your students have to schedule evenings to watch films or attend performances? Will you lecture and expect them to take notes on your presentations?
• Expectations for class time : How will the student feel confident and competent in your classroom? Is the class discussion-based? Do you follow your syllabus or do you improvise? Do they need to bring their books every day? Tell them what they can expect and how can they interact within those expectations to thrive in your classroom.
• Expectations outside of class: Provide them with an idea of what they will need to prepare for the course outside of class. Is their preparation primarily reading and writing individually, or will they be working in groups? Will they need to turn in assignments electronically outside of class hours? Give them enough information so they will be able to plan their schedules accordingly.
• Establish what you will provide for your students to be successful in your class. This may include in-class material, study guides, meaningful and prompt feedback on assignments, facilitation of discussion, attention to students with special needs, and a positive and welcoming classroom environment.
• Assert your boundaries: Let your students know how to contact you and when. For example communicate or provide your office hours, office phone number, availability for instant messaging, email, and when you do not respond (evenings, weekends, and traveling for example). If you are traveling during the semester, you may want to explain the dates that you will not be available.
• You may also want to alert your students to the events, habits, or situations that detract from your ability to fulfill your responsibility. For example, if late assignments, lack of participation, or sleeping during your lectures distracts you from timely and persuasive teaching, explain why you cannot tolerate these events and how you handle them when they occur.
• Student responsibilities : If attendance is required, participation is mandatory, or you want them to read the assignment before class, explain to your students that this is expected of them throughout the semester. Explain policies on absences, make-ups, emergencies, and accommodating special needs. You may also remind them that they are responsible for their success and communicating with you when they have need assistance or have other concerns.  The university launched new Title IX and Student Discrimination , Student Access Services and Equal Employment Opportunity offices to serve students, faculty and staff Jan 15, 2018.
• Assessment: How will you assign the course grade at the end of the semester? How many assignments will you grade? Do you have grading policies and/or rubrics or criteria for grading?
• Cooperation/communication/resources: Finally, you may want to spend a few minutes discussing university, department, library, or other resources for students to use in through the course of the semester.

“By giving students an interesting and inviting introduction, I was able to reduce anxiety about the course and help students view the class as a collaborative learning process. Every field has its own exciting research or striking examples, and it is a good idea to present a few of these up front. The teaching challenge is to find special ideas within your own field. Your class will thank you.”

–From “How to Start Teaching a Tough Course: Dry Organization Versus Excitement on the First Day of Class” by Kevin L. Bennett, in  College Teaching, 52(3), 2004

Additional Resources:

• Angelo, T. A., and Cross, K. P.  Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers. (2nd ed.) San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993.
• Erickson, B. L., and Strommer, D. W.  Teaching College Freshmen. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991.
• “The First Day of Class: Advice and Ideas.”  Teaching Professor, 1989, 3(7), 1-2.
• Johnson, G. R.  Taking Teaching Seriously. College Station: Center for Teaching Excellence, Texas A & M University, 1988.
• McKeachie, W. J.  Teaching Tips. (8th ed.) Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1986.
• Scholl-Buckwald, S. “The First Meeting of Class.” In J. Katz (ed.),  Teaching as Though Students Mattered. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, no. 21. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1985.
• Serey, T. “Meet Your Professor.”  Teaching Professor, 1989, 3(l), 2.
• Weisz, E. “Energizing the Classroom.”  College Teaching, 1990, 38(2), 74-76.
• Wolcowitz, J. “The First Day of Class.” In M. M. Gullette (ed.),  The Art and Craft of Teaching. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984.

Other Vanderbilt Center for Teaching Resources:

• Teaching Resources
• Introduce yourself
• Allow the Students to introduce themselves
• Discuss and evaluate the room environment together
• Course overview
• Departmental requirements/expectations
• Presentation of material
• Expectations for class time
• Expectations outside of class
• Instructor responsibilities
• Student responsibilities
• Cooperation/communication/resources

Teaching Guides

• Online Course Development Resources
• Principles & Frameworks
• Pedagogies & Strategies
• Reflecting & Assessing
• Challenges & Opportunities
• Populations & Contexts

Quick Links

• Services for Departments and Schools
• Examples of Online Instructional Modules

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Department of English

First-Year Writing

Classroom activities.

FYW courses put a primary emphasis on the circulation and development of ongoing academic projects rather than coverage of a specific content or explicit instruction in discrete skills. A FYW course functions as an academic seminar and, in this way, is built on the contributions of its members.

Because student projects provide the central focus of the course, then, working with student writing should be a part of most class sessions .

Ways to Feature Student Work

• Circulate drafts in process or portions of drafts in any number of ways (volunteers, random selection, copying a page (or even various sentences) from several drafts, asking students to choose a favorite paragraph or a place where they work with more than one text, etc.).
• Ask students to characterize, frame, or situate each other’s work (perhaps in a genre such as headnote, introduction, afterword, blog post, or even review).
• Build things together in a shared online space (e.g., a Course Bibliography in a Google Doc; an annotation or glossary of key terms in a Google Doc; a HuskyCT blog or discussion thread exploring potential extensions of the texts).
• Have students post drafts as discussion threads, allowing all students access and assigning a peer review process (with guidelines) for all group members.
• Build some peer reviewing in class and some out of class (through email or course management software).
• Help students build “affinity networks” or writing groups around similar projects.
• Feature a particular project from one student or from a collection you’ve made to help work through a problem or issue.
• Share reflective writing and process notes.
• Assign cover letters, informal (mid-process) presentations, formal presentations, or re-mediation projects (putting the larger project into a new genre or context).

Examples of Class Activities

Below is a list of in-class activities that instructors use in classes. These activities are not meant to be picked to “fill time.” They should be chosen to facilitate writing and group work and to meet that day’s specific learning outcomes. These are not the only activities you could or should do in class, but they should help instructors conceptualize the work of a single class period.

When students do individual or group work in class, be sure to have time afterward for the whole class to come together to reflect on and/or discuss the work that has been done. To avoid having students simply list what they discussed or found, it may be useful to structure that time as informal presentations, or to have groups upload their findings/ work to a common HuskyCT or Google Drive area. Some instructors also have groups write what they’ve done on the board or large-sized paper if a classroom is not tech-enabled.

The following examples are organized by generalized types of activities.

Working with Difficult Texts

Unpacking Difficult Passages

Prepare a handout with difficult passages from the text, or have students identify difficult passages in the reading. Assign students to different groups based on a particular passage.  In groups, have students trace how a term or concept is used in a particular passage and in the text as a whole. They should pull specific quotes that help them back up their understanding. Groups should use the textual evidence as a means to begin “translating” the passages. Afterward, they should go back to the text and reflect on why the author(s) used a specific term or concept in the text.

Visually Mapping a Text

A variation of this activity is to have students map the key terms visually. Together in groups, students should map and link key terms used by the author. Maps might not (and perhaps should not) be linear—students are encouraged to see the many ways the terms seem to interact in the text. Afterward, groups can compare maps to add lines or connections that they may not have noticed previously.

Exploring the Uses of a Text

Current, Past, or Future Contexts

Depending on your course inquiry and assignments, you may want students to consider how class readings can apply to and work in relation to different contexts, especially in the beginning stages of a larger assignment. Your specific learning goals will help determine which context will make most sense for your class to explore.

Current Context: Choose a current issue or have students work together to find a current issue that relates to your course inquiry and the text. Choose yourself or have students select key terms or concepts from the reading to help them examine or analyze the issue. Students will need to conduct research on the issue in groups. Then, on their own, in writing, students should draw connections between the text and issue.

Past Context: Ask students to bring a laptop or tablet to class, or divide them into groups (at least one student in each group should have a laptop). Using their devices, students should explore the sociohistorical context of the reading in order to consider how it might have affected the text’s rhetoric (or vice versa).

Future Contexts: Have students consider how the text might be useful for future conflicts, issues, or developments in society or academia. The future context may be best paired with either the current or past contexts to demonstrate the development of ideas or movements over time. Students should explore self- or group-generated questions through individual writing, then discuss or otherwise share their ideas.

What’s Missing?

In small groups, students brainstorm for situations or concepts that the reading doesn’t seem to account for and why or how that situation or concept might be important to include or discuss in the conversation. The class makes a list of these various missing pieces, and then students individually reflect on how these choices reflect the priorities and rhetorical strategies of the author. What do their choices reveal about their aims?

What Is This Text? Who Is This Author?

Any assigned text can be accompanied with a small research component designed to help students place the text in a larger context. If you assign a text by Judith Butler, for exam- ple, students could be assigned roles to establish this context. One set of students could research Butler the person; another set could say more about what her influential writings are (and what they seek to do); a third set of students could trace the reception and influence of these texts. Based on this research, have students reflect in writing on the significance of these contexts and what these findings demonstrate about academic writing and this specific conversation. Next, use the contexts explored as a jumping-off point for students to begin exploring their next assignment.

Information Literacy and Handling Sources

Citation Trail

One way to begin the conversation about Information Literacy (InfoLit) and how to use sources effectively is to ask students to explore how other writers use sources. Working with the texts used in class, invite students to choose, in groups, one of the works that the author has cited. Have students locate that source, read it (in its entirety if it’s short or just the relevant section if it’s long).

After reading the source, ask students to freewrite on the source’s main idea, what kind of source it is, and why the author used it. Then, in groups, have students discuss how the author of the class text used the source and how the source is contributing to the class text’s author’s main claims.

After facilitating a brief class discussion of the groups’ findings, have students reflect, individually in writing, on the different ways a writer can use sources and how such choices can inform their own writing.

InfoLit Through Terms, Search Engines, and Databases

As a class, have students brainstorm a research question that engages with the next essay prompt. Afterward, have students brainstorm the kind of sources that may be useful for exploring said question, the fields that may already discussing or provide insight on the topic (like specific news sources or subject specific databases). Then, for each kind of source or each discipline, have students brainstorm key terms and discuss why certain terms are more useful than others in certain searches. After the list has been made, have students determine where to look for this information. From this point, you can decide whether to proceed with the search as a class or to have students to break into groups to explore different terms, search engines, and databases.

You may want to engage your students in a conversation about research questions before this activity or in a prior class period. Students will likely not be sure how to craft meaningful research questions. Be sure that you build in moments for students to reflect in writing on what the activity means for their own research processes.

Documenting the Research Process

As a take-home assignment, have students take screenshots of their research process for a larger project (including pictures of the key terms they use, the search results, the articles they select, etc.) or record their research process. Students can either save the images on their computer or print them (whichever is more convenient). If they took a video, ask them to bring in their computer with the video. In class, have students map out the process—from where they began to where they ended. It may be best to do this on large sheets of paper, index cards, or construction paper. As they map out the process, have students make connections through a freewrite between the choices they made (e.g., how one term led to a new term, how they followed several hyperlinks and where that led them). Once they have finished their map/web and their freewrite, have students pair up and talk through their process and connections. In pairs, students should help each other identify gaps in their research and brainstorm new terms, websites, databases, etc., to explore. At the end, have students write out a research plan for the next portion of their assignment.

Annotated Bibliography

Have students bring an annotated bibliography and the original sources to class. It’s important to stress that this research often includes a lot of excess—simply choosing the first hit is often not the right match for a research project. Have students write about the choices they made in selecting their sources and reflect on how these sources contribute to their developing projects.

An alternative or add-on to this activity is to make students’ in-class work multimodal. With their annotated bibliographies, have students use either Prezi or construction paper and string to create a web that represents connections between sources. Students can address these questions: How do the sources talk to each other? How do they agree or disagree or qualify each other’s discussions? After students create their webs, have them reflect on the gaps that seem to exist in their web or identify the outlying sources that no longer work in their developing projects.

Depending on your course, you may want to make the annotated bibliography a collaborative project, where students contribute the sources they have found to a class archive that other students are encouraged to draw on in their writing projects. Google Docs (or a similar technology) can enable your class to create a “living” bibliography that each student can alter, add to, and improve throughout the semester.

Using Sources

Working with Other Voices

Have students highlight all the material borrowed or quoted from another source (including their own previous projects) in their essays in one color, and in a different color highlight all the places where they respond to or analyze those passages. Then ask them to evaluate their use of other voices—or trade papers and discuss with a partner. Are the  passages adequately unpacked, explained, and analyzed? Is the reader left hanging? Are there more quotations than the students’ own words? How does the student build on and revise or drop things they wrote about in the previous assignment?

This activity could work well alongside a discussion of the difference between summary and analysis.

Outside View

Have students pass their essays around in groups. Each student should choose at least one quotation in their peer’s paper and answer the following questions: Do you know where the quote is from? Does the writer describe how or why the quote is useful for considering something interesting or troubling about their project? Is the quote integrated into the discussion of the paragraph? Afterward, students can return their papers to the original writer, and students can spend five to ten minutes revising their use of that quote.

Exploring Structure

Reverse Outline

Have students create a reverse outline of a reading, thinking about questions like: Where is the agenda, the method, and the evidence? Is the argument linear? Does the reading present a compelling argument or an interesting idea? Students can do this work individually, in groups, or together as a class. They can also identify what work each paragraph of a challenging section is doing in the author’s argument (beyond what each paragraph is saying). For instance, is a paragraph introducing a key term or idea? Illustrating a key point of evidence?

Be sure to give students time to reflect on what they have discovered through the reverse outline and how it can apply to their own writing. You may want to give them an in-class writing activity that asks them to take their own draft and model it after the essay and reflect on how the new structure influences the content and purpose of their draft.

Mapping the Text

Using the whiteboard, blank paper, or colored construction paper, have students, in groups, create a visual map of the text that they read for class. Encourage them to make design choices that reflect the author’s purpose in the text. Students can then discuss the choices the writer made in response to a specific audience or conversation.

Introduction Workshop

Project (or copy and distribute) a student’s introduction to the class and have students write what in the introduction is helpful for them as readers and what they might still need information on (for instance, if the required texts for the assignment haven’t been introduced). Have them restate the author’s project in their own words. Afterward, students s hould gather in groups to discuss various strategies for addressing potential issues that may have arisen, and then the whole class can discuss approaches to revision.

Also, before looking at student writing, you might have students consider introductions from the assigned readings, especially if you’re asking students to write in a similar genre. Discussing the readings can then serve as a jumping-off point for looking at student work.

Collaborative Revision

Revision can be one of the toughest aspects of writing for students to fully grasp and take advantage of. Extensively working with revising in class to demonstrate what effective revision can look like helps students to understand that revision is more than simply correcting grammar and word choice. At any stage in the drafting process, working on revision with the entire class can help students conceptualize how revising can be done effectively. Depending on your class and its needs, you may either want to pre-select students whose essays best exemplify an issue the majority of the class is grappling with or have students volunteer their work themselves. If you pre-select students, you’re most likely going to gear your discussion toward a particular issue that the sample drafts exemplify. Self-volunteered drafts may engage several different issues. As students look at the samples, have them think about how the project might be supported with texts from the class, how it contributes new knowledge, and how the writer might move forward in the essay. It may be helpful to have the student identify a specific location where they’re having trouble. As you go about your discussion, you will be modeling ways of responding to texts in peer review. Be sure to make that explicit to the students.

Topic-Specific Workshop

After reading a round of student drafts, you may find that there are common challenges that students are working through. These common issues can be the basis of in-class workshops to help students navigate these particular challenges. Below are two examples, but there are many other writing challenges to work with in class.

Transitions: Some students may be listing their major points in the body of the paper rather than developing a project; consequently, you might call on a student volunteer, or project two anonymous paragraphs from a student paper, to examine how one paragraph moves to the next. Ask students how the two paragraphs might be related and, in groups, have them rewrite the ends and beginnings of the two paragraphs so as to make explicit how the ideas in the paragraphs build on and relate to one another. Have each group present their revisions and discuss their strategies.

In-Text Citations/Using Sources: Using sources effectively in a text is a challenge for many students. Students must not only cite information correctly, but also integrate the quote into their own language and consider how the quote is working with their argument. You may first want to examine an assigned text and, as a whole class or in smaller groups, analyze the author’s use of quotations and other outside sources. Try to push students to  decipher the different ways that sources can be used to support a point (using a text like Joseph Harris’s or FYW’s webpage Why Quote? can give students a vocabulary or starting point for discussion). From here, get a volunteer from class (or choose a student ahead of time) and project or distribute a paragraph from their essay. As a class, discuss how the writer could revise their quotations and citations. Then, have students turn to their own texts and work on the way that they use sources in their projects.

Paired Read-Alouds

Pair students and have them read each other’s paper aloud. Paired read-alouds can be used at different points in the drafting process for different purposes. With a rough draft, you can ask: Does the new set of eyes see more places to push the project further? Are there places where the evidence is unclear? Where might more textual support be needed? At a more polished stage, read-alouds can highlight fluency, sentence structure, and grammatical errors.

Useful for working through difficult readings, reverse outlines are also beneficial to students during drafting. Have students reverse outline their own papers, identifying the individual aims and rhetorical moves of each paragraph, and then have them reflect on what they have noticed. Or have students swap papers and reverse outline their peers’ papers, and then return the papers to their original authors. The students could also reflect on what they notice from their peers’ rendering of their projects. In any case, at the end of the activity, give students time to write about and reflect on what the reverse outline has revealed to them about their work and how they’ll use it to move forward with their draft.

For a more multimodal approach, students can create their reverse outlines using Prezi, construction paper, or the like.

Creating Revision Plans from Feedback

Students don’t always know what to do with comments after they receive your feedback or feedback from peers, so it might be useful to build in time for them to prioritize and plan. Have students look at a sample paper with comments first; then engage them in a discussion of how to prioritize and use feedback. Afterward, give them the opportunity to reflect on their own feedback and write a revision plan.

If you’re doing a portfolio in your course or wish for students to document their writing process, you may want to collect and respond to their revision plans or stress that they keep track of these documents.

Writing About Their Own Writing

At any stage in the writing process, ask your students to reflect on the writing that they have done so far, using the following prompts for in-class, informal, ungraded writing: What personal investment do you have in this issue? Why does your argument matter? What counter-interpretations might work against your emerging claims? What are you struggling with most as you approach the draft? How does how you are writing aid (or complicate) your answers to these first questions? If you choose to, you can discuss these writings as a class or in small groups.

Representing the Writing Process

Have students use markers, pencils, Play-Doh, pipe cleaners—check out the art cart in the FYW office—to draw, make, or sculpt a representation of a certain part of the writing process (perhaps right after students have completed an assignment). Afterward, give them a few minutes to write about their representation. In small groups, students can share their various processes. Doing so allows students to unpack what approaches and strategies worked—it also gives them a chance to see how others approached a similar task.

Creative Synthesis

Near the end of the semester, have students read over their major essays and extract one or two “keywords” or important themes from each. (For instance, if a student wrote an essay about capitalist values in Maus, one keyword from that essay might be “capitalism,” or “homo economicus.”) In a new document, have students write their lists of keywords at the top of the page. They should then write a brief story in class that in some way touches on each of these themes.

It’s not necessary to use the word itself—so, if one keyword is “masculinity,” the student doesn’t actually have to say “masculinity” somewhere in the story, so long as the idea is present. For example, if a student’s keywords were “capitalism,” “dystopia,” and “masculinity,” the student might write a story about a young man in a dystopian society who, in order to prove his masculinity and support his paralyzed father, has to engage in gladiatorial combat. Maybe this gladiatorial combat is televised, with pauses in the fighting for advertisements for men’s deodorant, etc.

“One-Minute Papers”

At the end of a class session, you can ask your students to write short responses to questions like: What is the one big idea or new insight you’ve taken from today’s class? What is still confusing for you? This will help students practice metacognition by allowing them to consider what in their thinking has changed and what remains a challenge for them moving forward.

Writing Across Technology

Key Terms and Infographics

Students can mine a text for key terms and concepts in groups. After discussing the terms and concepts in a larger group, the small groups can then use Piktochart or Canva to create an infographic to help explain how a specific term is being used in a text. This exercise can be framed with the following question: Assuming that your audience is future students in this class, how can you visually explain how the author is using [a particular key term]?

Critical and Creative Captioning

Practice using captioning software for videos, such as with YouTube or Amara. Students can consider how captioning functions rhetorically and depends on concepts of audience, context, and purpose. This activity can be used as students work on their own videos (such as a Concept in 60 video), or students can work in groups to caption sections of a short video in class. (Movie trailers often work pretty well here.)

Cover Design

Ask students to use the design concepts from The Academic Writer to analyze the design of a visual text—a book cover works well. After evaluating the effectiveness of the design choices in the text, let students work in groups to propose alternative covers. This can be done on computers (using software like Word, PowerPoint, GIMP, or Illustrator) or with paper and markers. Students can then present their designs (explaining why these designs are effective) and vote on the elements they’d like to include in a reprint of the text.

Electronic Discussion

If all students have access to bring-your-own personal technology (laptops, smartphones, or other mobile devices with internet access), discussions can become hybrid spaces with the use of platforms like Twitter, Padlet, and Socrative. Allowing students to participate in discussions through technology can help second-language writers, students who are shy, and students with disabilities—and can, in fact, help all students contribute in more thoughtful ways, because writing an answer allows for more time to think. The platform being used can be projected, giving everyone easy access to responses. The instructor can choose to read these responses aloud to focus and direct the discussion or ask students to take a couple of moments to quietly compose responses to spark new avenues of inquiry.

Screencasting the Writing Process

Have students use a program like Kaltura or PowerPoint to screencast their writing as they work through a draft at home. Once they have turned in the essay, have students bring the video to class to watch individually. As they watch their videos, have them describe what’s happening and take notes on what they’re noticing about how they write. Afterward, have them discuss in groups what they noticed. After the discussion, have students review their notes and reflect on what went well and what could be worked on as they proceed in their next assignment.

Recorded Elevator Pitches

Sometimes students work through ideas best when they talk about them aloud. When they’re early in the writing or research process, have them pitch their developing ideas to each other in a minute or less and use their smartphones to record their pitch. At the end of the pitch, peers should provide feedback. As students move on to the next partner, they should incorporate the previous partner’s feedback (or make revisions based on their own observations). At the end, have students listen to their pitches and reflect on what changed from one pitch to the next.

Guided Self-Placement

Your first-year writing requirements can be met by:.

• Registering for ENGW 1102, ENGW 1111, ENGW 1113, or ENGW 1114
• AP transfer credit
• Completing ENGW 1111 Honors (placement by the Honors program)
• Completing both ENGW 1110 & ENGW 1111 (placement by the General Studies Program)

Guided Self-Placement Steps

See if you’ve registered for ENGW 1102 ,  ENGW 1111, ENGW 1113, ENGW 1114 , and read the course descriptions

Due First Day of Class

Write a 2-3 page letter to your instructor where you introduce your writing history and your expectations for the course. Please look up your instructor’s name so that you can address your recipient appropriately. Consider the following:

• What experiences have made you feel successful as a writer?
• What experiences have made you lose confidence as a writer?
• After looking at the student learning goals and course descriptions, what do you think the course you enrolled in will entail?
• If you selected ENGW 1113, ENGW 1114, or ENGW 1102, why did you choose this course?
• What are you the most excited about and what are you the most uncertain about with this course?
• Is there anything else you’d like your instructor to know?

Bring your letter to the first day of class unless your instructor has requested another form of submission. This writing assignment is ungraded  but  required  in order to pass the class.

If you believe that your current course placement is not a good fit for you, contact your advisor as soon as possible.

Many students assume that First-Year Writing will be similar to their high school literature or AP English courses. However, it is quite different. While you will expand on some of the skills learned in those courses, you’ll also be learning rhetorical flexibility (how to write for different audiences in different situations) by writing in a variety of genres and media.

You and your academic advisor may have chosen a FYW course already. We want to ensure that each student is aware of their options as early as possible through a process of  guided self-placement . 

Self-placement  means that you have agency over which course or courses you want to take. 

Guided   means the Writing Program directors, your advisors, and your instructors are here to help you make that decision.

Browse Course Material

Course info, instructors.

• Dr. George Kocur
• Dr. Christopher Cassa
• Prof. Marta C. Gonzalez

Departments

• Civil and Environmental Engineering

As Taught In

• Programming Languages
• Software Design and Engineering
• Computational Science and Engineering

Learning Resource Types

Introduction to computers and engineering problem solving, course description.

This course presents the fundamentals of object-oriented software design and development, computational methods and sensing for engineering, and scientific and managerial applications. It cover topics, including design of classes, inheritance, graphical user interfaces, numerical methods, streams, threads, sensors, and …

This course presents the fundamentals of object-oriented software design and development, computational methods and sensing for engineering, and scientific and managerial applications. It cover topics, including design of classes, inheritance, graphical user interfaces, numerical methods, streams, threads, sensors, and data structures. Students use Java ® programming language to complete weekly software assignments.

How is 1.00 different from other intro programming courses offered at MIT?

1.00 is a first course in programming. It assumes no prior experience, and it focuses on the use of computation to solve problems in engineering, science and management. The audience for 1.00 is non-computer science majors. 1.00 does not focus on writing compilers or parsers or computing tools where the computer is the system; it focuses on engineering problems where the computer is part of the system, or is used to model a physical or logical system.

1.00 teaches the Java programming language, and it focuses on the design and development of object-oriented software for technical problems. 1.00 is taught in an active learning style. Lecture segments alternating with laboratory exercises are used in every class to allow students to put concepts into practice immediately; this teaching style generates questions and feedback, and allows the teaching staff and students to interact when concepts are first introduced to ensure that core ideas are understood. Like many MIT classes, 1.00 has weekly assignments, which are programs based on actual engineering, science or management applications. The weekly assignments build on the class material from the previous week, and require students to put the concepts taught in the small in-class labs into a larger program that uses multiple elements of Java together.

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Planning the last day of class

Main navigation.

The last day of class is a key opportunity to invite students to reflect on their work over the quarter; think about what strategies, skills, and lessons they'll take away and apply to future communication moments; and celebrate their accomplishments.

In planning your last day of class, you might consider incorporating the following into your lesson plan:

• Class activities that asks students to reflect and synthesize their experiences.  You can find some ideas here .
• Time for them to fill out their final course evaluations. It's strongly recommended that you give students 10-15 minutes of class time to complete their evaluations. See some ideas about how to frame those final course evaluations for students here .
• A conversation about where they might take their research next. You might tell them about  opportunities through UAR  to apply for funding for their research, or direct them to our " Next Steps for Your PWR Project " page through the PWR website that provides them with a robust list of publishing venues for their essays.
• An overview of further opportunities for additional work on writing, rhetoric, and oral communication in PWR, such as our great  additional elective classes  (even first-year students can enroll with the permission of the instructor) and our  Notations  (application cycles happen in fall and spring, but we do admit students on a rolling basis if they apply through the "Apply" link on the menu).
• A discussion of other courses at Stanford that touch on the same theme as your class.  You can look at  Explorecourses  for ideas, or ask the students themselves for recommendations for courses they've heard about or are planning to take.
• Food! You have $25 you can spend per section for refreshments for the last day of class.  Write the  PWR business team  (Michelle and Cristina) for more information and see our  Class Activities Funding  (TBU Policies) page.