We're headed back into school again, and that means prep prep prep! We've put together digests on this topic before, but you can never have too many resources to help you prep for the start of a school year. In this digest, we have resources to help you plan for the start of the fall semester. Big thanks to Sara Fulmer, @Sara_Fulmer, who tweeted a number of these resources! You can also check out Weekly Digest #41: Preparing a Syllabus, Weekly Digest #64: Preparing a Learning-Focused Syllabus and Weekly Digest #22: The First Day of Class for more resources!

1) Design & Teach a Course: Make The Most of the First Day of Class from the Carnegie Mellon University Eberly Center, @EberlyCMU

This resource, loosely based on Lyons et al (2003) walks through 2 overall purposes of the first day of class, and 8 concrete objectives. For each objective, the resource gives advice about how to accomplish the objective.

2) Plan for Next Year: Organize the Year, Topics, and Daily Lessons by Jessica Boschen @whatihavelearned

This page is full of tips from the author's experience as a teacher, as well as downloadable templates. Jessica runs the blog What I have Learned.

3) Course Workload Estimator from the Rice Center for Teaching Excellence, @RiceCTE

This resource allows you to input various activities that you may have your students use to promote learning as measure progress to see how much time students may be spending outside of class. This tool provides estimates, so of course time will vary by student. But, it can be used to help you plan your course to balance the workload throughout the semester and make sure you're hitting the sweet spot of outside work. 

4) First Day of Class Activities that Create a Climate for Learning by Maryellen Weimer

The title describes it all! Descriptions of activities that you can peruse and choose from for that first day of class.

5) How to Build your Classroom Library by Scholastic, @Scholastic

This resource gives tips and tricks for how to build the classroom library. Some you may already know about, and others may be interesting ideas you've never thought of. The article explicitly states that this won't happen in a day, and evolves over time. But starting at the beginning of the school year probably won't hurt!

Every Sunday, we pick a theme and provide a curated list of links. If you have a theme suggestion, please don’t hesitate to contact us! Occasionally we publish a guest digest, and If you'd like to propose a guest digest click here. Our 5 most recent digests can be found here:

Weekly Digest #115: Open Access Education Journals

Weekly Digest #116: Getting Ready for Effective Teaching

Weekly Digest #117: The Relationship between Mental Health and Cognition

Weekly Digest #118: Embodied Cognition: Use of Body and Space to Improve Learning

Weekly Digest #119: Study Resources for Students