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Engage Your Students from Day 1: The 10 Best Back to School Engagement Activities for High School Science Classrooms

Engage Your Students From Day 1: 10 Back to School Engagement Activities for the High School Science Classroom

Even if you’re a veteran teacher, the butterflies that come with a new school year can still feel very real because we want to make sure that we’re kicking off the first week of school on right foot!

This is even more important for the students because our job as teachers is to create a classroom where they want to be, where they want to learn, and where they feel comfortable asking questions and taking risks.

By engaging students from the first day, it really does set the tone for the rest of the year.

So you can finally stop searching hours on things like Pinterest because in this post you will find 10 of my favorite back to school engagement activities to grab your students’ attention on the first day!

Start with an Exciting Icebreaker Activity

This is an activity that most students, especially high school students, might cringe at initially, but it really is such an important way of building a supportive classroom community from day one. 

Start thinking beyond having students standing up, saying their names and what they did over the summer or giving an interesting fact about themselves. Here are a few easy and little to no prep classroom icebreaker activities where you’ll get a little more buy-in 👇

➡️Interest Surveys: Have students fill out a short survey about their interests in and outside of science. From here you can then create small groups for students to share with each other and see what they have in common or create a folder or notebook cover summarizing their interests. 

➡️Science Bingo: Create a bingo card with science-related questions and have students mingle to find classmates who can answer them. This is a great social activity, especially for those who find it more challenging to meet new classmates! I’ve done all the heavy lifting in this activity. Check out these Science Bingo Cards.

Engage Your Students from Day 1: The 10 Best Back to School Engagement Activities for High School Science Classrooms 1
Grab your free copy of the science-themed Bingo cards here!

➡️Two Truths and a Lie: This is one of my favorites and I spread out this activity over the first week of school. Students write their answers on a notecard and I collect them and we do about 5 each day the first week of school. It’s an excellent way for everyone to learn more about each other, especially if you play along with the class!

Icebreakers are the perfect way to set a positive and inclusive classroom all while helping students feel connected and excited to collaborate with their peers.

Set the Stage with an Attention-Grabbing Demonstration or Experiment

This is probably my favorite back to school engagement activity. It captures students’ interest, curiosity, and excitement for the subject.

Science is the one class where students are able to test things out and become more hands on in their learning! So why not start the school year off with a few fun demonstrations and experiments 🤓

Don’t worry about having to wait for the right unit to come along, because these science classroom demonstrations are ones that students won’t mind seeing again and again!

➡️Specific Heat Balloon Demo: I do this during my properties of water lab but it’s such a crowd favorite they won’t mind seeing it multiple times!

See what happens when a balloon filled with air and a balloon filled with water are held over a candle.

➡️Physics Magic Tricks: Simple tricks that can be explained with scientific principles such as the Liquid Density Demonstration or play this short video showing 5 Fun Physics Phenomena and have students pair up and try it out themselves.

If you want to help your students work through these demonstrations as a “phenomenal” intro to the first unit of study, here is my 🌟FREE🌟 phenomena introduction worksheet you can use with any of these demonstrations to really help students make those scientific connections!

Phenomena Guide Freebie

➡️Inquiry-Lab: Test the absorbency of different paper towel brands

paper towel inquiry lab cover - Alyse Johnson-Chilla

Observational labs are a great approach to really bringing science into our everyday life because many of our daily activities practice some form of scientific principles. 

The Paper Towel Lab is a simple inquiry lab where students can gain experience in experimental design by answering the question: How does the absorbency of school paper towels compare to other brands? Through structured inquiry, students will develop hypotheses, conduct experiments, and analyze their results to determine the most absorbent paper towel brand!

Each of these simple science demonstrations are going to help engage students with hands-on experience and create an environment where it’s encouraged to ask questions and share curiosity from the start!

Establish Open Communication and Share Your Passion

This right here can be one of the more challenging areas of being a teacher regardless of what grade level you teach. Building trust and rapport with students by showing your commitment to their success is a long game, but also so important to establish in the very beginning of the school year. 

Even when you feel like your students aren’t listening…trust me…they are 😉. 

So go ahead and share your personal story! Here are a few strategies to help establish trust in your classroom all while sharing your passion for learning:

➡️Personal Introduction: Share your journey including interesting facts about yourself. 

  • How did you get started into teaching?
  • What type of student were you at their grade level?
  • Maybe you struggled in science- share how you overcame that!
  • Why do you love science?

Anything to give more of a glimpse of who you are, why you have a passion for science, and what you are looking forward to in the upcoming year. If you want an easy one-page teacher introduction template, then this might be exactly what you’re looking for:

Engage Your Students from Day 1: The 10 Best Back to School Engagement Activities for High School Science Classrooms 2

➡️Strategies that work all school year: Outside of sharing your personal story that students might forget (with all the craziness of the start of the school year), these are a few other strategies I like to apply to make sure that will pay off!

1️⃣Use the room: Your classroom walls and desk is the perfect place to share your story, personal interests and hobbies! This is an informal way of getting students to unknowingly practice observational skills and start working on those CER writing skills!

Quick Tip 💡: Have students guess basic things about you while practicing CER- claim, evidence, reasoning by completing the Practice Writing CER: Real World Scenarios

Here’s how it can look…

  • Claim: Our teacher likes coffee.
  • Evidence: There is a coffee maker in the front of the room. 
  • Reasoning: Our teacher would not have a coffee maker in their room if they did not like coffee.

2️⃣Open Door Policy: Remind your students that you are approachable and available for help! My classroom door is ALWAYS open (even during my prep and lunch periods). But, it’s also important to model maintaining personal boundaries. It is so easy for teachers to burn out even with the best intentions. 

A personal boundary I emphasize with my students is that emails are only answered during school hours. So, if a student emails you after school hours or at night, it will not be read until the next school day. By midterms, I seldom get emails from students after school hours because they know I won’t see it until the next day so they end up talking to me in class instead. This clear communication and strategy makes it more likely that students will interact with me face-to-face and adds a human element to our relationship.

3️⃣Goal Setting: Encourage students to set personal or learning goals and discuss how you can support them. You can help students set their goals and make a plan to achieve them using my favorite goal-setting method: SMART goals. Students can write their goal for the marking period, semester, or year and this planner will give them the scaffolding they need to Maybe this is done at the beginning of each quarter where students complete a SMART goal-setting worksheet that can be reviewed weekly or bi-weekly. 

By creating a supportive and motivating classroom environment, it will help students to feel that even if science isn’t their strong suit, they can still ask questions, build on their STEM skills and develop confidence in their learning ✴️

Conclusion

With all that being said, being consistent in strategies to engage students through icebreakers, exciting demonstrations and open communication is SO IMPORTANT for that first week back to school!

I hope you found a few back to school engagement activities that can be applied in your class to share a bit more of yourself and to share what you are looking forward to in your science class. Your passion and excitement can make such a difference, even more than you might realize!

If you have any back to school engagement activities that you love using in the beginning of the school year, feel free to share it in the comments section below or on social media using the hashtag #EngageFromDay1 and tag👉 @keystonesciencepa

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Hey there, friend! I’m Alyse, the science-loving brain behind Keystone Science. I’ve got a passion for science that drives everything I do. Sound like you too? Follow my blog for helpful tips and lesson ideas for your science classroom. 

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