The first day in your middle school science class should be memorable for students. You want them to be excited to come back to your class, curious about what the year will be like and what they will learn. You also want to make sure they understand the structure of your class and what procedures are in place. You want to tackle it all. Let me tell you how to do it: stations. Yep, on day 1. Using stations, I can get through a ton of middle school science activities for the day of school that help prepare students for the year.
What are Stations?
Stations are a teaching strategy that involve students moving through different areas of the classroom to complete a specific activity or task. They allow students to engage in hands-on, interactive activities while rotating throughout the classroom within designated periods of time. Stations are an amazing way to differentiate instructions, allow students to collaborate with their peers and learn by doing, rather than having the teacher be in front of the room talking all period. You can learn more about why I use stations in middle school science here.
How Do You Choose Stations on the First Day of School?
Think about your goals for those first days of school. For me, I want to accomplish a few things.
- Get to know my students
- Go over the syllabus
- Review expectations
- Allow students to learn the layout of the classroom
- Have some fun with team building activities
- Allow students to set goals for the year
- Have an opportunity to walk around the room and have conversations with my students
- Refresh their memory on different lab equipment that can be found in the classroom.
When choosing stations, I also make sure that each task can be accomplished within 8-10 minutes to keep things moving. I’ll give you a breakdown of how I structure my stations on the first days of school.
1. Team Building Activities
I add in 2 of these activities into my stations to add some fun into the first few days of school and a way for students to collaborate with peers. This helps reduce those first day jitters for them a bit without it being a full blown ice breaker activity that requires students to stand up in front of the room and talk. I know I personally hated that as a student and I still dislike it now when it happens during PD!
One of the stations is a paper airplane challenge in which students have to build a paper airplane that can travel a specific distance in a given time frame. The second is the index card and tape tower challenge. Students have to build the tallest tower they can with just index cards and tape in a given amount of time.
2. Syllabus Scavenger Hunt
Students will be given their syllabus at this station and they must answer questions based on the syllabus. I strongly believe in giving a syllabus to your students, even 6th graders. It really helps them understand the class and it helps parents/guardians understand what to expect as well. This requires them to look through it in order to get the answers correct. I ask the important things that I want them to remember like
“What is the cell phone policy?”
“What is the class room number?”
“How can I be contacted if you need me?”
“Are you allowed to have snacks in class?”
This gives them an idea about some of the rules and procedures I have in my class without standing in front of the class and talking about them. Finding it on their own by looking through the syllabus will help them retain the information better.
You can find this syllabus template here or you can shop TPT here.
3. An "All About Me" Page
This is an obvious one, I want to get to know them! Also, many middle school students love talking about themselves and their interests. I feel that it is so important to know about the students in your classroom. The better you know them, the better you can teach them. I also go beyond the easy questions like favorite movie, musician, book, etc. I like to ask them essential questions like
“How do you learn best?”
“What type of activities do you feel are unhelpful when trying to learn a new concept?”
“Is there anything that you would like me to know that can help make this school year successful for you?”
I learn a lot from those questions. It helps me make a lot of decisions including seating charts, methods of instruction, grouping students, etc.
4. Make a Map of the Classroom
I set up one station with paper and some colored pencils so students can make their own map of the classroom. I let them walk around the room to identify key areas to include such as where the lab safety equipment is, where they can find a garbage can, where student supplies are, where they can find the pass, pencil sharpener location, etc. I promise this helps them remember! It doesn’t have to be pretty, it just has to do the job!
5. Name That Tool!
Throughout my years of teaching, I have learned that students always forget the correct terms for lab equipment. I give them this little quiz to see if they can identify tools like a beaker, Erlenmeyer flask, spring scale, tongs, goggles, etc. I even let them work together and they still get stuck on a few! We review it later on and it helps them remember the correct names for the tools during the year.
6. Goal Setting
I print this page on the back of the “All About Me” page so that I can keep them in a binder to reference throughout the year. I don’t just focus on academic goals either but personal, community, social and life goals. It’s important for students to think about their goals beyond just academics. This helps me learn a lot about my students too!
7. Classroom Expectations
I add a little twist to this and have students fill out a CER (claim, evidence, reasoning) template to fill out. I simply ask students to identify a procedure or expectation I may have in the class just by looking around. That becomes their claim, they write down evidence to support that and then finally, their reasoning with evidence to back up the claim. This makes the students
- Think about classroom expectations and procedures and
- Think like a scientist by backing up a claim with evidence and reasoning.
Depending on the amount of time you have in a class period, these stations activities can take 1-2 days. In a 50 minute class period, I can get them done in two days. Block scheduling (90 minutes) can allow this to be completed in one class period.
Once students move through the stations, I quickly review them and fill in any gaps.
You can grab these exact stations that I use with my class here or you can shop TPT here.
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