A few days are left until the beginning of the new school year and every teacher knows every September is a new start! And we all make new (school) year resolutions! And as with all new year resolutions some we keep and some we forget by the end of the first month! However, as Aristotle excellently put it, "Well begun is half done"! That means that much depends upon the beginning. The way I see it, some classroom routines can lead to positive classroom management and classroom atmosphere conducive to learning! I've been a teacher for too many years not to know that you should set the ground for good relationships and establish a safe learning environment for your students from the beginning. So these are some suggestions for this stressing, but also exciting time of the year!
First things first!
The very first time your students step into your classroom, you should give plenty of time to getting to know each other. There are many ways to present yourself and have students present themselves.
Present yourself to the students
- You can use simple ppt with some information about you. The information can be written or just in pictures , so that it will be easy for everyone to figure out some things about you.
- Another nice and simple idea could be to bring to class photos or objects that mean something to you and let students guess the story behind them.
- Something that I have found intriguing for students, especially older ones, is Teacher T/F facts. In this one I either dictate or write on the board 5 sentences about me and then I ask students to guess if they are True or False.
- Of course, these are only some ideas simple ideas without many teaching aids. You could always prepare a quiz about the teacher using any of the web tools you find easy to use, eg. Kahoot, Quizziz, Baamboozle etc.
Present yourself to parents
- Classroom teachers always have a parents-teacher meeting at the beginning of the school year. You could be present and introduce yourself, as well as tell them a few things about your expectations and your teaching style.
- If you cannot be present at the parents-teacher meeting, you can send an email or print a letter with some information about you and your lesson. This way parents will know both what to expect from you and what you expect from their children. Keep in mind that if you value your work and you show it, parents will be able to trust you and cooperate with you more easily.
Students present themselves
- There are various ways to have students present themselves, You can choose to give them a ready-made "All about me" handout to fill in or you can let them improvise! Older students can work miracles if you tell them to make a poster about them! A very simple example for younger students is this. You can find many more online for free or you can even create yours with Canva:
- Questions, questions! Students usually like talking about themselves-except for the introvert ones, but these may only share what they feel comfortable with. You can just give them a list of questions and ask them to answer the ones they want. This way they can choose what they want to say or even what they are able (linguistically) to talk about. What I found really nice using was the M&Ms question game . Questions are divided in categories, according to the colour of the chocolates. For example, brown can be hobbies, so if they choose brown, the questions may be something like: "What's your favourite hobby?", "Do you prefer painting or playing computer games in your free time?" etc. You can find variations of the game in this link.
Know your students-Value their needs!
To know your students well means that you will be more prepared to tailor your lessons according to their needs. Try to use the new theories of instruction, which are based on differentiated teaching, the multiple intelligences theory and SEL education to cater for everyone's needs. Also allow flexibility in learning outcomes and avoid riigid, summative assessment such as end-of unit tests, standardised tests and final projects. Use ways of formative assessment instead such as, entry and exit slips, thumbs up/thumbs down, emoji surveys etc. You can find more examples of formative assessment here.
You can collect data about your students' background information, that will help you form a clearer picture of them in many ways. Some of these are suggested in the following video .
Rules!
There are plenty of ideas for classroom rules to choose from, but the most important thing about rules is one and the same: Rules must be set from the beginning! It would be a good thing to be the result of common decisions between the teacher and the students and they should be put up somewhere where everyone can see them and refer to easily, when a need comes up. Again there are thousands of free printable Rules Posters on the Internet, but you can always have your students create their own ones, so that they can personalise them and make them more representative of their class. Here's an idea for younger students on Canva. 
However, apart from the ideas you can find on Canva, you can also customise the templates to your needs.
Teaching area!
I know that English teachers in Greece do not have separate classrooms, but you should try and have a little corner for English in every classroom. It can be a small sofa, or pillows on the floor, where you can gather for reading time. It can be a corner on the wall, where you can hang your projects or even announcements for the next lesson. It can be a box for students to hand in their assignments, anything that can be conducive to make students feel that English is something extra or something different to their teaching routine! You can use colourful banners or posters to make the corner more attractive and teach a relevant vocabulary to refer to it: such as Reading corner, Project corner etc. Apart from this you can also assign different areas of the classroom for different groups when you do group work. 
SEL education!
Social and emotional learning is applied in many schools around the world. According to Wikipedia: "Social–emotional learning (SEL) is an educational method that aims to foster social and emotional skills within school curricula. SEL is also referred to as "socio-emotional learning", "social and emotional learning", or "social–emotional literacy". In common practice, SEL emphasizes social and emotional skills to the same degree as other subjects, such as math, science, and reading." According to S. Crashen and his affective filter hypothesis "learners with high motivation, self-confidence, a good self-image, a low level of anxiety and extroversion are better equipped for success in second language acquisition". You can find more information about his natural approach which aims at "students to become comfortable with the class activities and with interacting with each other in the target language" (p.95)as well as activities to promote it in the classroom in his book The Natural Approach. Moreover, D. Goleman in his book Emotional Intelligence , 1995 , wrote that EQ (Emotional Quotient) is more important than IQ (Intelligence Quotient) playing a catalytic role in someone's success in life. "MGIEP is UNESCO’s Category 1 Research Institute focused on Transforming Education towards SDG 4.7 through programmes that promote social and emotional learning, innovate digital pedagogies and empower youth. Our Vision is "Building Kinder Brains". We believe in Transforming Education with Social and Emotional Learning for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)."On their site they provide teachers with lots of useful materials, among which FREE courses on SEL education and games to enhance social and emotional learning. I have tried Marc Brackett's and Yale's Mood Metre with my classes last year and I can tell it had an impact! Ypu can find a free course by him on Coursera if you want to get acquainted with his theory.(https://www.coursera.org/instructor/marc-brackett) What I have practised among other things last year is the application of the mood meter as a routine in a series of lessons based on SEL education in the frame of an Erasmus+ training I had had in 2022. The mood metre is a technique that trains students to focus on their feelings, recognise them and handle them in a way that they they will work for them and not against them. In other words not react to them impulsively but respond to them thoughtfully. This is a handout I gave my students at the beginning of every lesson.
And this is the mood meter we used to choose the appropriate adjective to describe our feelings. You can print it for free here. And this is a video, which shows how to use it.
These are some of the most important things I use in the classroom to ensure that we start on solid ground and we have got a clear framework as a basis for our lessons. Hopefully they will be of use to you, too, and if you need further information you can contact me and I will be happy to help!
Have a nice new school year!
References
https://www.shescraftycrafty.com/2013/07/get-to-know-you-games.html
https://curipod.com/blog/Ten%20Formative%20Assessment%20Examples-e2c120693f184f9d8e98ba95e9fd72c3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhMkqjbiSaA
https://southbayliteracy.org/affective-filter-and-stephen-krashens-theory-of-second-language-acquisition/
http://www.sdkrashen.com/content/books/the_natural_approach.pdf
https://mgiep.unesco.org/
https://www.coursera.org/instructor/marc-bracket
thttps://www.marcbrackett.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Mood_Meter_Marc_Brackett_Permission-to-Feel.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j95Lkvlsu_s
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