Along with January being the start of a new calendar year, it also allows teachers a new beginning to the school year. Both bring the opportunity for fresh starts and a new perspective on how to handle the upcoming year. But in order to achieve that, it’s best to plan ahead and treat the first day back from winter break like the second first day of school. So in today’s episode, we’re sharing how to maximize the week after winter break and set yourself up for success!
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Transcripts
Emily 0:36
Hey there. Thanks for joining us today. In today's episode, we're talking about how to maximize your first few days back after winter break, and we have a teacher approved tip for something you could do now to get ready for back to school.
Heidi 0:49
We start our episodes with a morning message, just like we used to do at morning meeting in our classrooms. This week's morning message is, how do you recover from a rough day of teaching?
Emily 1:00
And we got lots of responses to this one. So it's almost like teachers have lots of experience handling hard days or something. Who would have guessed? Theresa said, a good nap, a hot supper and a long bath. Holly says, I drive home listening to comedy. I laugh and laugh. I also drive in listening. Laughing is such a great stress release. I have a 30 to 45 minute drive each way. She recommends the pure comedy station on Sirius XM Radio.
Emily 1:29
Amy says, play games on my phone that I can win. I need to feel successful at something. That's brilliant, that's life hacking right there. Melanie says, veg in front of the TV. Nothing but mindless, doing nothing with no one asking me anything. April says she tells every detail to her husband. I bet he loves it.
Heidi 1:48
Lucky husband.
Emily 1:51
Lori suggests venting to a friend or family member, sleep, read and chocolate, not necessarily in that order. Heather says either heading home to rest or go to the gym for a workout, opposite ends of the spectrum, but both are helpful.
Heidi 2:04
I love that. I think that's so brilliant to know like what you need in that moment, if it's just to check out, or if it's to really dial into some movement and getting back in your body and letting the day go.
Emily 2:14
Yes, Megan says, Call a friend, take a nap or eat ice cream. Jeff needs silence and good food.
Heidi 2:22
Jeff has the plan there, I think.
Emily 2:24
Erin says she started to teach herself crochet in August, and it's helped a lot with her anxiety. That's how I feel about puzzling ever since I started puzzling. So maybe take up puzzling if you need good relief for a rough day. We'd love to hear how you recover from a rough day of teaching. Come join the conversation in our teacher approved Facebook group.
Heidi 2:46
I've heard it said that for many people, September is the new January, because you get a second chance of that new year feeling. You know, New year, new you time for fresh goals and all of that stuff.
Emily 2:56
Yeah. But for teachers, January is the new September, because in January, you get the perfect opportunity for a second first day of school.
Heidi 3:06
The gift of winter break is that when you come back, there is a natural feeling of reset. If you plan ahead to treat that first day back like a second first day of school, you get to set up the second half of your school year for massive momentum and success.
Emily 3:20
So the question you're probably wondering is, how do you make your first day back from winter break feel like a second first day of school? So let's talk about it. Where should we start Heidi?
Heidi 3:30
Well, at back to school, we like to use the term ATTABOY to help us remember our goals for starting the year. ATTABOY stands for affirming, training, teaching and assessing at the beginning of the year, and those same goals are just as important in January.
Heidi 3:32
Except I guess it would be ATTAMOY, because it's the middle of the year now. But that just doesn't have the same ring to it.
Heidi 3:55
No, it doesn't. Okay we're gonna stick with ATTABOY because it's the beginning of the new calendar year.
Emily 4:02
So that totally works. Yeah, totally works. You're right.
Heidi 4:05
Using these goals can help you decide how to leverage that first week back in school for maximum success, but it will also help you with your planning.
Emily 4:15
So let's start with the first A in ATTA BOY, which is affirming. At the beginning of the year, we go hard on affirming. We want to help those new students feel safe and settled right away, but affirming still has an important role come January.
Heidi 4:29
When you focus on affirming your students, you also do a lot to build your class identity. This is a crucial component to your classroom community and to behavior management. A class that feels connected and united will take a lot less effort to manage when students feel valued and motivated, they are naturally engaged and they are much less likely to misbehave.
Emily 4:51
So true when they have that buy in. The best way to affirm your students when they come back after winter break is with a warm welcome. So make sure to greet them individually and make it clear how happy you are to see them. Some students will be sad to be back at school, and others will be relieved. So do your best to hold space for their different emotions.
Heidi 5:13
You might want to plan a special morning meeting greeting or an activity to help with that warm welcome. If you have a class cheer or a secret handshake, make sure you do it that day.
Emily 5:23
In the new year you can focus on affirming by helping your class reconnect with each other. You can invite students to share details about their winter break, but do this with care. Make sure to keep the focus on what they enjoyed and not on the gifts they received.
Heidi 5:37
What you could do instead to help reconnect is have students share what they're excited about for the rest of the school year, or their favorite thing about winter, or their favorite memory from the first half of the school year.
Emily 5:49
Another affirming activity you may want to do in January is to have a class meeting about something that you want to see change in your classroom community this year. There may be a lot of contention happening at recess, or maybe kids have gotten sloppy in managing their materials. Have a class meeting and let your students discuss what can be done to solve the issue.
Heidi 6:09
When the kids come up with their own solutions, they are much more invested in the outcome, and it helps the class feel like they are all on the same team, working together toward the same goal.
Emily 6:20
Something I love to do in January is have my students set goals for themselves. It's the perfect time to reflect on how much they've grown since school started and think ahead to what they want to achieve by the end of the school year.
Heidi 6:32
If you've saved work from the beginning of the year, it would be great to pull that out now so they can compare it to their current work. Students are always surprised at how much they've grown in just a few months.
Emily 6:43
We have a free resource if you want to try this with your students. It includes a writing page with a prompt for each grade level. So if you have second graders, the page says, Before long, I will be a third grader. And then prompts them to first reflect on their growth so far, then they think about what they want to be better at before third grade. Last they're prompted to get into the nitty gritty of what steps they need to take to meet that goal.
Heidi 7:07
We have three different versions of the goal setting pages with varying levels of journaling and thought required, so you can choose the one that is the best fit for your students.
Emily 7:17
Moving on, the next part of our ATTA BOY goals is the first T training. Just like at the beginning of the year, focusing on training means putting a big focus on procedures and routines.
Heidi 7:29
Don't all roads lead to procedures and routines, though?
Emily 7:33
Yes, they do on this podcast, for sure. If any procedures have not been working well and you've decided to change them, now is the perfect time to teach it fresh, like a brand new routine. Use our tell try tally talk method to teach the steps of the new routine and give students time to practice. Be sure to check out our slides to make the process as easy as possible.
Heidi 7:56
But if you are keeping all of your current routines, now is the time to review them. You can schedule procedure review throughout that first week back to make sure that you cover the most important ones. And then, of course, any that might need some extra work.
Emily 8:10
We like to use our procedure review slides when we revisit procedures. This is so easy to use, the only thing you have to do is type the name of the procedure you want to review on the slide, and then you're ready to go. You can get these ready before winter break so that they're waiting for you when you get back. Then when you're ready, project the slides for your class and ask the students to rate how well they meet your expectations from one to five.
Heidi 8:34
To help keep everyone involved, we suggest having the kids hold up one to five fingers to reflect on their assessment. And then you can just take, like, a rough estimate of what most of the kids think, and then you click the slide that many times to make the stars appear. So if they mostly rate a four, you click the slide four times and then four little stars appear.
Emily 8:52
Feel free to make this reflect more of your own assessment though. If it feels like the kids are overestimating how good they're doing, they might think they're doing a five star level end of day cleanup, but you know that most days you have to straighten things after they leave. So if you think it's only two or three star work, that's what it should be rated. And tell them why.
Heidi 9:11
The magic of this process is the discussion around it. The stars are cute, but really this is a structured way to invite your class to help make things run more smoothly.
Heidi 9:20
You'll likely want to review the steps of any struggling procedures and give students a chance to practice. If you still have those, tell try tally talk slides from the beginning of the year, keep those handy so that you can pull them up and go through the steps and make sure that you're giving your students time to really practice.
Emily 9:37
We really can't overstate the importance of devoting time to tightening up your procedures and routines at this time of year. Sure, it's about to be January. You're halfway through the year, but that means there is still a lot of school year left. Do you want to spend that time correcting hallway behavior every single day till June? Or would you rather spend 20 minutes reviewing and practicing those routines in January and save yourself all that time and hassle.
Heidi:
Being proactive about fixing your procedures and routines when it gets to the new year will save you so much time in the rest of the school year.
Emily:
You may also want to review some of your expectations for using class supplies like glue sticks, which is every teacher's biggest headache, and your classroom library, which is probably a disaster, about this time of year. If you used our Guided Discovery method at the beginning of the year, you can revisit the charts or the slides that you made for these tools at the beginning of the year.
Heidi:
But if you didn't teach your expectations clearly at the beginning of the year, don't be afraid to schedule time for it in January. You can spend that time then on Guided Discovery lessons for your most used tools and student spaces, and still reap the benefits. Like we said, even though it's January, there will still be a lot of school year ahead of you.
Emily:
And I don't think it's ever really too late to focus on your procedures and routines and expectations. Truly, it will always benefit you.
Emily:
Let's move on to the second T in ATTA BOY, which is teaching. The first teaching decision you need to consider when returning to school in January is when to resume your regular content. You likely won't be quite ready to hit the ground running on the first day back, and neither will your students. Plus it's possible you may still have many missing students the first few days back, depending on when your school resumes.
Emily:
So decide when the right date will be to get back into teaching new content. And if you used our December teacher survival kit, there was a place in there for you to mark this for January. So you may have already decided it if you've used that tool.
Heidi:
And if you've already done that gold star for getting that first step already out of the way. Yes, now, obviously you don't want to wait too long to start back into your regular teaching, but if you have a few days to fill or a weird, short week back decide how you want to fill that week.
Emily:
Of course, you'll want to pencil in lots of time for goal setting and procedures and expectation review, but you will still have more time to fill. One thing to consider is, if you want to build in any pockets of prep time, are you sick of hearing us talk about this yet?
Heidi:
What teacher is tired of hearing about prep time?
Emily:
That's true. They're probably excited to even think about an extra minute of prep time.
Heidi:
So go back and check out Episode 169 if you want more details. But the quick summary is that pockets of prep are periods of time that you plan into your schedule where your students are busy with meaningful independent activities, and while the kids are busy, you are freed up to do some of your own prep work.
Heidi:
If you end up leaving for winter break without getting very far ahead with your January planning, you will probably want to keep some pockets of prep in your schedule until you're back into the flow of your regular daily routine.
Emily:
Anything your students can do independently works as a pocket of prep. Stretch independent reading time a little longer. Use some educational videos in place of science and social studies lessons. Since your students are coming back after a week off, a little review would go a long way. Have them play digital review games, or get out the games from your math centers, and have kids rotate through them for math time.
Heidi:
And I do hate to say it, but when you get to January, it's also time to start thinking about test prep. The best way to prepare students for end of year testing is to give them lots of opportunities for retrieval practice. Emily, can you remind us what retrieval practice is?
Emily:
Yes, retrieval practice is when students have to retrieve previously learned information from their long term memory without the benefit of notes or books to help them. One of the easiest ways to build in retrieval practice to your busy schedule is with spiral review.
Heidi:
We like to include spiral review practice in our daily schedules with what we like to call morning work. But it's really just a daily review page, and you can, of course, do it at any time of the day that works. The key is just to find a time that fits with your schedule.
Emily:
You can also get spiral review into your schedule with homework. Now, in general, we're not huge fans of homework, but you can make homework simple and parent friendly by using our spiral review homework pages.
Emily:
They're formatted as a double sided half sheet of paper with language review on one side and math review on the other. The activities are designed to be done in only a few minutes, so this could be a great way to get some spiral review done if you're struggling to find the time in class.
Heidi:
And you could also use those half sheets in class as well if you want a quicker review than a full page of our morning work. We've heard from many teachers that use them as warm up activities for their language and math blocks every day.
Emily:
Okay. Lastly, we have the final A in ATTA BOY, which is assessing. And January is the time you'll likely be doing a lot of mid year assessments. If there are any you need to give, make sure to plan those into your schedule for January.
Heidi:
The key with mid year assessments is to use the information that you gain from them to adjust your teaching. If your cadence scores come back and your students reading fluency skills are dropping a little, January is the time to make plans to address that. You can start doing repeated reading practice in class or at home, and consider adding in daily fluency mini lessons, like our fluency in a flash digital mini lessons.
Emily:
If you use small groups for reading or phonics or math, make sure you have the data you need to adjust your groups so that each of your students is getting targeted instruction.
Heidi:
Also, if in January you'll have end of term coming up soon make sure that you have what you need for those dreaded report cards.
Emily:
Oh and possibly parent teacher conferences looming ahead. You gotta have all that info. So just a quick reminder that it's totally normal to give your mid year assessments and not see the gains you were expecting. Between the beginning of the year and mid fall assessment, you likely saw a big jump in progress, but that's because students were recovering from the summer slide.
Heidi:
Yeah, mid year gains tend to be slower, but slow and steady wins the race. Right? Don't worry, unless there's been a backslide or maybe progress has completely stalled, then you're going to have to make some decisions, but there are still many months ahead to keep that growth going.
Emily:
And we want to kick off our January intentionally so we can set the stage for all the growth. The first few days after winter break are a second chance at that back to school, almost fresh slate. That can be such a gift for teachers. Make sure to maximize this time by focusing on your ATTA BOY goals of affirming, training, teaching and assessing at the beginning of the new year.
Heidi:
We would love to hear how you maximize the time after winter break for a fresh start in your classroom. Come join the conversation in our teacher approved Facebook group.
Emily:
Now let's talk about this week's teacher approved tip. Each week we leave you with a small, actionable tip that you can apply in your classroom today. This week's teacher approved tip is plan now for a new school year. What can you tell us about this Heidi?
Heidi:
Okay, this sounds kind of crazy, but this is your annual reminder to stock up on Happy 2025 supplies in the next few weeks, if you want them for the first day of school. So this idea comes from Joanne at head over heels for teaching, and it's one of our favorite back to school traditions.
Heidi:
On the first day of school, she hands out party blowers and New Year's hats and headbands to her kids at the end of that first day, and then they do a countdown right before the final bell rings and they blow the horns and cheer and celebrate the start of their new year. It's just such a fun idea, and it's such a simple way to really have a big impact on those affirming goals of giving your class this identity of this is who we are, and we're all working together, but you do have to plan ahead for this.
Emily:
Yeah, because it's going to be tricky to find New Year's party supplies in August. So if you want to do this next year, you got to plan for it now.
Heidi:
So do you need to to remind yourself? If you know, put it on the calendar, send yourself an email, whatever it takes to remember to grab the discounted stuff on January 2.
Emily:
Or if you're like me and hate having to check multiple stores to find a class set of supplies, you could just pay the full price and buy it all now, and it might be worth it to not have to worry about it.
Heidi:
Yeah, I hate having to make trips to multiple stores. Maybe, if you live somewhere where there's lots of options, but you don't really have too many stores around here that carry New Year's supplies.
Heidi:
And if you are also in that same boat, it might simplify things just to order online. You can find plenty of party supplies on Amazon, and if you wanted to extend the New Year theme a bit, Oriental Trading does lots of cute New Year craft kits that would be really fun to start the school year. I'm not sure if their kits go on sale after holiday, but before you order those, definitely wait until you get a free shipping coupon in your email.
Emily:
Oh for sure. And the Target Bullseye spot, or whatever they call it these days, does tend to often have New Year stuff there, so that's a good place to check too, if you have a target nearby. So just make sure you know where you've stashed everything, though, between January and September. You don't want to go to this effort only to forget where it is nine months from now, which is something that I would so do.
Heidi:
Yes, we definitely want to avoid that. So send an email or a reminder, or carrier pigeon, whatever you have to do.
Heidi:
To wrap up the show, we are showing what we're giving extra credit to this week. Emily, what gets your extra credit?
Emily:
I'm giving extra credit to another holiday rom com book, because I am in my holiday rom com book era, I'm giving extra credit to the book Snowed In by Catherine Walsh. I read and loved her book, Holiday Romance last year. Did you read that one Heidi?
Heidi:
I did, and it was so cute.
Emily:
Oh gosh, I loved it. And is, this is set in the same universe, so we see the main characters from Holiday Romance in Snowed In.
Heidi:
Oh, I love when they do that.
Emily:
It's another story with Irish characters, Megan and Christian. They're from the same hometown, and they reconnect when they run into each other in Dublin. They decide to pretend they're dating when they go home for Christmas to avoid the awkwardness that awaits them.
Heidi:
Of course, what else could they possibly what else could they possibly do?
Emily:
And I freaking love a fake dating trope. I don't I think some people hate that. I love it. I think it's my favorite. My favorite trope and the banter in this book is 10 out of 10. This book is on Kindle Unlimited, if you have that. But I listened to the excellent dual Irish narrator, so I can recommend that the narration is very good in the audiobook.
Emily:
I'll have to check that out, because nothing better than a audiobook narrator with a good accent.
:
Yes, in fact the accents are so good that I have to be careful when I'm multitasking while listening. I'm like, wait a minute. What did they say?
Heidi:
I'll definitely have to check that out. That sounds right at my alley.
Emily:
What are you giving us credit to Heidi?
Heidi:
Well my extra credit goes to the Luminette Three Light Therapy glasses. That's a mouthful. So, as you may know, getting sunlight in your eyes early in the morning is so beneficial for your circadian rhythms, but mornings are hard. It's really hard to fit in 30 minutes to, you know, sit outside and look at the sun. I don't look at the sun, but you know.
Emily:
Yes, that is the second story window stance. Do not look at the sun, you guys.
Heidi:
We make the hard calls here, yep. But these classes make it so easy to get the light. They have three settings, and then it automatically shuts off when the time is up. It's a little tricky to kind of wear these and do your eye makeup, but otherwise, it's been so easy to add it to my morning routine.
Heidi:
And I am surprised at what a difference they've made to how well I'm sleeping. Oh, awesome. Yeah. I went from like, struggling to sleep every single night to actually, like sleeping pretty well most nights. It's been an absolute game changer. Yay. I would hand these out if they weren't so dang expensive.
Emily:
They are expensive, and I got them too, so I will give the cautionary tale, which is I wore them the first day, and I was like, don't feel anything. I'll just kick it up to the next level. And so I was at like, the highest level within like, two or three days of using it.
Emily:
And I found, after about a week, that I was experiencing major eye fatigue the rest of the day. And it took me a while to put two and two together. Of, like, Man, my eyes are so tired I can't even focus on what I'm trying to read in the afternoons. Like, Oh, I wonder if it's these glasses. So if you do these glasses, go slow when you start them. Like, even if it seems like they're not bothering you. Just, just start slow.
Heidi:
It does take a while to build up to using them. I only use I used them on the low setting, which is supposed to be 45 minutes, and I only did a half hour for like, the first week. Yeah, I think that was helpful. Good call.
Heidi:
That's it for today's episode. Capitalize on your almost brand new start of the year by planning for your ATTA BOY goals. And don't forget our teacher approved tip to grab those Happy New Year supplies now for your next first day of school.
Emily:
If you enjoyed this episode, we would love it if you shared it with a teacher friend who might need to have a fresh start in January as well. This is a great way to help our show reach new listeners.
