First Week Classroom Activities for Success in a Secondary PBL Classroom

The first week classroom activities I use aren't fillers before the real learning begins. They're intentionally designed to build the relationships, community, and skills students need to thrive in a student-led PBL classroom.

Key Takeaways

• Use the first week to prepare students for how they'll learn all year.
• Prioritize relationships before jumping into academics.
• Co-create classroom norms to build ownership and accountability.
• Explicitly teach students how your PBL classroom works.
• Give students a low-stakes opportunity to practice PBL before larger projects.
• Build reflection, goal-setting, and personal accountability into the year from the start.

The First Week Sets the Stage for the Rest of the Year

Every year, there seems to be a point when the newness of school wears off. Students settle in, expectations increase, workloads pick up, and some of that beginning-of-the-year energy starts to disappear.

I don't think that pattern is unique to my classroom. Here in Minnesota, it also happens to hit right when the weather turns cold, and it's dark by 5 p.m., which certainly doesn't help with teenagers.

Point being, what happens during the first week of school can help us get ahead of those downward spirals later in the year, when the excitement wears off and the expectations and workload set in.

That's why I'm pretty intentional about my first week classroom activities. I'm not trying to fill the first few days with games until we're ready to get to the "real stuff." Those first days are the real stuff.

​In my experiential classroom, I plan the first week or two around three priorities:

1. Relationship-building
2. Community-building
3. Experiential learning training

That third priority will look different depending on the classroom. For my students, it means project-based learning training because that's what they'll do throughout the year. Whatever your approach, the goal is to teach students how to learn in the environment you're creating.

And while I've separated these into three categories here, they're definitely not three neat phases in practice. They overlap constantly. A relationship-building activity might also introduce inquiry. A community-building experience might require collaboration and student direction. A mini-PBL might tell me quite a bit about my students.

That's intentional.

So let's go over exactly how I approach that first week or two, and how these intentionally planned experiences help set the stage for a year of success.

First Week Classroom Activities for Success in a Secondary PBL Classroom

1. Start with Relationship-Building

I spend the first few days heavily focused on relationships. But because this is an experiential classroom, even our get-to-know-you activities give students an early taste of how learning will work throughout the year.

Students Design Their Own Icebreakers

Yes, we do icebreakers. And yes, teenagers tend to hate them. Frankly, I don't particularly enjoy many traditional icebreakers either.

So rather than handing my students another round of Two Truths and a Lie, I give them the problem to solve: Why do teenagers hate icebreakers, and what could we do differently?

Students investigate the problem, work in teams to design their own icebreakers, and then lead those activities with their classmates.

We're getting to know each other, but students are also collaborating, problem-solving, using inquiry, making decisions, and leading their own learning. It's a relationship-builder, team-builder, and subtle introduction to experiential learning all at once.

Students "Meet the Teacher" Experientially

I also put an experiential spin on the traditional Meet the Teacher activity.

I give students information about myself that I think will help them get to know me and work with me throughout the year. That might include my background, hobbies, favorite foods, interests, or other pieces of who I am.

Then they create something that represents me.

It could be a collage, sculpture, photography, or another visual representation they come up with. I approach this as a mini-PBL, so once again, we're relationship-building while students are also getting an early introduction to choice, creativity, and student-led project work.

Add Storytelling When There's Time

If I have a couple of weeks rather than just a few days, I also like to incorporate a storytelling PBL. Students write their own stories and eventually share them with the class, Moth-style.

I especially like this one because the relationship-building goes in both directions. Students learn about their classmates through the stories they hear, but the process of developing their own stories also asks them to learn something about themselves.
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By this point, we've started breaking the ice. And without sitting students down for a lecture about student-led learning, they've already experienced quite a bit of it.

2. Build the Classroom Community Together

Relationship-building naturally starts creating community, so there isn't a hard stop between the two. But once we've begun getting comfortable with each other, we become more intentional about the kind of classroom community we're going to create.

Co-Create Classroom Norms and Expectations

I don't hand students a finished list of classroom norms. We create them together.

Students reflect on how they learn best, what they need from the people around them, and what that means for the expectations of our classroom community.

Giving students a voice in creating those norms also gives us something meaningful to come back to later.

Let's say it's November. Everyone is stressed, something isn't working, and we're not living up to a norm that we created together. 

We can pull it back out and say: "This isn't working right now. This is a norm you created. What can we do about it?"

And then we problem-solve together.

That's very different from me pointing to a rule I wrote in August and telling students they're breaking it.

Establish Personal Accountability

My students also begin working through a community-building and personal accountability workbook.

The first part is completed during these opening weeks, but the resource isn't intended to disappear into a folder afterward. Students revisit reflection and accountability pages weekly and monthly throughout the year.

They explore what it means to be a solid member of a community, reflect on the role they personally play in creating that community, and continue holding themselves accountable as the year progresses.
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We're essentially setting the stage during the first week for something we'll continue working on all year.

3. Prepare Students for the Learning Ahead

Once we've started building relationships and establishing our classroom community, we move further into the academic side of the year.

For my students, that means preparing them for student-led project-based learning.

Begin With a Personal Learning Plan

Before students start designing projects, I want them thinking about themselves as learners.

They begin with a Personal Learning Plan. The first portion is largely about figuring out who they are and how to make learning personal: their interests, strengths, challenges, goals, what they want, and what they need to be successful.

From there, they create an actual learning plan for the quarter.

And again, this isn't something they complete once and forget about. Students revisit their plans weekly to see whether they're on track and make adjustments when necessary.

I also have a short individual meeting with each student about their Personal Learning Plan. That gives us a chance to talk through what they've identified and what their plans look like before we move further into the year.

Explicitly Train Students for the PBL Classroom

Then we get into PBL training.

I think this part is important because we sometimes expect students to walk into a student-led classroom and somehow already know how to operate in one.

They don't.

So I explicitly teach them what project-based learning is, how it's different from simply completing a project, and what I expect from them in our PBL classroom.

We get into the components of quality PBL, the design process, execution strategies, task management, our feedback and revision process, and the skills they'll need to work more independently.

I use my Student-Led Project-Based Learning Starter Kit to guide much of this training, and the workshop itself takes a couple of hours. I also have a digital PBL workshop for teachers that walks through the design process and can be used with students as part of this training.

The point isn't to spend days lecturing students about PBL.

It's to give them enough understanding of the process that they know what they're being asked to do once I start stepping back.

Then Let Them Practice With a Mini-PBL

After the training, students practice.

I don't teach them all of this and immediately throw them into a massive project. We start with a short mini-PBL where the stakes are lower, and they can experience the process from beginning to end.
What that looks like changes from year to year.

Sometimes students put together a small multicultural fair. They study a culture, create an artifact, and host a mini-fair for the school.

Other times, I've had students produce short documentaries that require them to get out into the community and interview people. The documentaries are five minutes or less and might focus on community needs, community heroes, changes in the community, local politics, or another theme. The important piece is that students have to talk to real people and get them on film.

The storytelling PBL I mentioned earlier can also serve this purpose.

The specific mini-project isn't especially important. The practice is.

You will know your students and their interests by this point, so take a look at their PBLs, listen during their icebreaker activities, and develop a mini-PBL that parallels their interests. 

Students have a chance to work through the PBL process, collaborate, manage tasks, interact with people beyond the classroom, create something meaningful, receive feedback, and figure out where they need support, all before we get into the bigger projects they'll tackle throughout the year.

Then The School Year Really Gets Going

That's essentially what my first week or two looks like.

Relationships --> community --> training --> practice.

By the time we get into the nitty-gritty of the school year, students haven't just listened to me explain how our classroom is supposed to work. They've already experienced it.

• They've gotten to know the people they'll be learning alongside.
• They've had a hand in defining the community they're responsible for maintaining.
• They've reflected on who they are as learners and what they want to accomplish.
• And they've learned and practiced the process they'll use again and again in our PBL classroom.

That's why I don't see these first week classroom activities as extras before the academics begin.

​They're what make the learning that comes next possible.

Have questions? Please ask in the comments, or feel free to reach me by email! I'd love to chat and brainstorm first week classroom activities that are specific to your goals and students. 

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