20 Ideas for Back to School Night

I know some of us are still in school, so thinking about back-to-school night may be the last thing on your mind. But for me, I love to always be prepared. I’m one of those people where I’ll either be extra prepared in advance or I’ll bury my head in the sand and just pretend that the whole thing doesn’t exist… Then I end up in a complete panic the night before because I haven’t prepared! This blog post contains 20 ideas for back to school night – or meet the teacher night if you prefer – that will hopefully help you be prepared.

If you’re looking for something to really help you stand out this year… Check out my meet the teacher night escape room. I guarantee you, your staff, your students and their families will love it!

1. Introduce Yourself

Be sure to give students and their families some information about yourself. Who are you? What is your background? Your experience? If you find it difficult to think of things to talk about, you can make a little ‘meet the teacher’ poster or leaflet to hand out to students and their families so they can have some information on you.

Including things like your hobbies, interests, likes, dislikes can also make you feel more relatable to students and their families too. This will help to break the ice and start building those important relationships.

2. Take a Tour

Take everyone on a tour around your classroom – and your school too! This will help students and their families feel more settled with knowing their surroundings and what there is around them.

3. Daily Schedules and Routines

This is a great time to share your daily schedule and routines to students and their families. Help them feel prepared for what is coming and get them used to what their new routine will be in your classroom. This also gives you a chance to share more about the way you run your classroom, the type of activities that you do and give everyone an insight into you as a teacher.

4. Explain the Curriculum and Learning Goals for the Year

A lot of students families actually get really nervous about asking too much about what is taught through the year because they are unsure what it entails. So I find being open and just explaining to everyone and providing some visuals around the room is really helpful! If I do themes throughout the year, I let families know too. I’ve had families send me in items to link with those themes in the past or have friends who are firefighters etc come to visit us, so it definitely helps!

5. Discuss Classroom Rules and Expectations

Another opportunity to help students get prepared for coming into your classroom. I like to have the rules made visually in posters around the room so that students can easily see them and refer to them too.

6. Demonstrate a Lesson or Activity

This is where I love to use my meet-the-teacher night escape room because it gives my student’s families a little insight into what the activities and lessons look like in my room.. Differentiated, engaging, hands-on etc.

7. Share Examples of Previous Work

If you have examples of work from students from previous years, this is a great time to put them up on display. It gives an insight to what type of activities your students will do throughout the year.. And also helps to get your new students excited to come to you too!

8. Discuss Communication

Having good communication with students’ families is really important. And it’s something that I really focus on discussing with families during meet-the-teacher night. This means that we can all be open about communication, how to communicate.. And when. You can use this opportunity to gather contact details, find out who should be contacted first for different things etc.

9. Provide Materials for Students to Use at Home

This can be a little bit of a marmite one because not everyone wants to send work home.. And not everyone wants to receive it. But it’s always worked really well for me. I don’t send home anything major, usually either my ‘All About Me Lap Book‘ or my ‘Only BUN of Me‘ craftivity. These are great for students to fetch it on the first week of school all completed so that we can all discuss with each other.. And get to know each other.

10. Share Volunteer Opportunities and Information to Support Your Classroom

I think it’s really hard for us to communicate throughout the year with all families individually how they can help. So I really like to have some options available during meet-the-teacher night for ways that families can get involved and help out in the classroom. This can be things like..

• Finding out if anyone is available to chaperone on field trips.
• Material donations.
• Help with costume prep for concerts/performances.
• etc.

11. Answer and Address Concerns

Not just from students’ families, but from students themselves too. Ask if people have any concerns, worries.. Or even just if there’s any questions that they have. This is the perfect opportunity to work with students who may struggle with transition, change and coming into a new classroom with a new teacher. If you know me, you know how highly I value strong teacher-student-family relationships, and this is a really great opportunity to start working on those before school even starts!

12. Sign-In Sheets are a Must!

Have sign-in sheets right by the entry to your classroom for families to fill in their names, contact details and any other information you want to use so that you know you are able to get all of this information.

13. Provide a List of Important Dates and Events

Put together a simplified calendar for the year of important dates and events. Now, there are going to be things added throughout the year that you may not know about at the moment. But, if there are dates that you do know about, I really advise giving those to students families right now before the school year starts. Especially if they are for events/days where families may need to purchase items for.

14. Paperwork Station

If you’re going to have a paperwork station, put just a teeny bit of thought into some things like;

• How can I encourage families to want to come to this station?
• What can I do to distract and occupy students at this station while their families fill out the necessary paperwork?

Treats.. Snacks.. Drinks.. Word searches.. Toys.. Books..

15. School Policies and Procedures

If you have a school that has a huge amount of information on these, try to condense them down into quick bullet points on a piece of paper. You don’t want to overwhelm your students and their families.

16. Extracurricular Activities and Clubs

If these are available to your students, definitely share them with students and their families. I like to try to introduce the leaders of those clubs/activities in to my meet-the-teacher nights so that they can introduce themselves and share a little about their work too.

17. FAQs

If you’ve been at this for a few years, you’ve probably already started to identify some frequently asked questions each year. Now and again you may get a new one. The best advice I can give is to make them into a leaflet or posters to have up on display so that families can easily see and access them. This should minimize the need for repeating the same questions and answers throughout the time.

18. Welcome Packet

You may consider putting together a welcome packet for each student. I like to use file folders so that each student has their own one. Then I fill it with the important bits – don’t fill it with everything or it’ll end up stuffed in a drawer and never looked at!

19. Purchase Station

If you have a school who sell their own clothing, supplies, gym wear etc. Then it’s really helpful to have a station set up for this. Even if it’s just a try-on station so that you can help students and their families find their correct sizing in clothes and then they know which sizes to order.

20. Refreshments and Snacks

I don’t know why, but refreshments and snacks always help to break the ice! I like to dot them around the room in different places and have different items on offer to suit families. This also opens up conversations about food, dietary requirements and any possible allergies.

What tips do you have for meet the teacher night? Share them in the comments below.

Nikki

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Find all of my favorite back to school resources here.