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It's the beginning of a new school year, and teachers are sharing what they do in the first days of school. Here are some helpful blog posts and listserv threads:

Christina of the Daring English Teachers blog shares what she does on the first day of class to make the day memorable for her students, how she sets expectations, and how she gets her students started writing in this annotated collection of past blog posts: https://www.thedaringenglishteacher.com/2018/08/gearing-up-to-go-back-to-school.html

Larry Ferlazzo has curated a collection of online resources, "The Best Resources for Planning the First Days of School," available at http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2011/08/08/the-best-resources-for-planning-the-first-day-of-school/

Valentina Gonzalez shares three mistakes to avoid in the first days of school (and good practices to implement in their place) that are especially welcoming to English learners but really beneficial for all students: https://elementaryenglishlanguagelearners.weebly.com/blog/3-common-mistakes-we-make-on-the-1st-day-of-school

In this Edutopia article, Maurice J. Elias shares questions to ask your students at the beginning of the year, during the second and third weeks, and throughout the year: https://www.edutopia.org/article/important-questions-ask-your-students

Here's a creative approach to dealing with student cell phone use in class: a video helping Spanish learners to say goodbye to their phones at the beginning of class and hello to them at the end of class: https://minutebyminutespanish.com/spanish-teachers-phone-policy-for-gen-z-when-admin-refuses-to-create-a-uniform-policy/

Here's a link to an infographic-style letter to parents about what to expect when their child is in a proficiency oriented class: https://martinabex.com/2018/08/07/parent-letter-for-proficiency-oriented-language-classes/

Here are some free resources especially helpful for middle and high school students from Señora Chase: a student survey, hall passes, the syllabus, etc.: https://senorachase.com/2018/08/01/free-back-to-school-resources/

Maris Hawkins draws on her own and other teachers' resources and ideas to provide a variety of ways to get to know your students and their language abilities without doing explicit reviews in this post: https://marishawkins.wordpress.com/2018/08/01/back-to-school-week-ways-to-avoid-a-review/. She’s also compiled an extensive collection of back-to-school links, resources, and ideas here: https://marishawkins.wordpress.com/2018/08/03/back-to-school-bonanza/

Avoid a review unit by diving directly into a Netflix unit with your returning language students, as described here by Megan Smith: http://www.creativelanguageclass.com/ditch-the-review/

Get lots of ideas for classroom seating arrangements and options in this blog post: https://srahuff.wordpress.com/2018/08/09/flexible-zone-seating-in-high-school/

Emily Huff plans to use Goosechase (a scavenger hunt using mobile devices) with her students to review syllabus content. Read her post for more details and for other ideas to make syllabus review an active process: https://srahuff.wordpress.com/2018/08/07/combining-goosechase-and-syllabus-information/

This name game ball toss not only gives you and students a chance to learn each other’s names, but it also established the norm of target language use: http://misclaseslocas.blogspot.com/2018/08/1st-day-of-spanish-1-name-game-speedball.html

Bryce Hedstrom advises, "Almost every year the honeymoon phase will trick you into thinking you don’t really need a coherent classroom management plan because these kids are the ideal group you have been waiting for. Don’t get fooled again. You have just a few days to establish the tone while the students are malleable, before the class begins to create their own routines they will follow. You don’t want those routines." Read his suggestions for routines to establish, especially for the beginning and ending of each class, at https://www.brycehedstrom.com/2018/first-week-to-do-list