265 FREE Back to School Activities & Worksheets

FREE Back to School Worksheets

Ready to start your class off right? The first day of class is an important time for teachers and students alike - it’s the time to learn all your students’ names, set the tone for your classroom, and make sure everyone’s feeling relaxed and ready to learn. You probably don’t want to charge in with too much new material on the very first day - after all, it’s important for your students to feel relaxed around you, and around each other, so they’ll be comfortable enough to learn and produce the new ESL concepts you’ll be sharing with them. The question is, how can you help them feel relaxed?

With BusyTeacher.org’s 265 resources for the first day of school, of course! Whether you’re kicking off a class with a brand-new set of level-one ESL students, or launching a final class with a group of level-five students approaching full fluency, you’ll find resources here to break the ice and get your class laughing and talking like they’ve known each other for years.

Want to start things off as simply as possible? BusyTeacher.org has simple fill-in-the-blank worksheets that can encourage your students to share a few basic facts about themselves. Want to open with a fun game? We’ve got a wide variety of games for all ESL levels. Want to kick off your class with a funny activity that’ll get everyone laughing together? BusyTeacher.org has got you covered, with silly exercises that’ll melt even the most frigid classroom.

Whether your class if full of young kids or full-grown business English students, BusyTeacher.org’s 265 first-day-of-school worksheets offer something just right for your class. We’ve got worksheets with friendly pictures and simple vocabulary, worksheets based on popular movies and songs, exercises that let your students review what they did over the holidays, and even colorful posters to hang on your classroom wall.

All this variety comes thanks to BusyTeacher.org’s worldwide community of participating ESL teachers, who are kind enough to share the worksheets and other resources they develop in their own classrooms. Every worksheet you’ll find on this site is completely free to download, print,and use as you see fit - no registration required. But if you ever have a worksheet you’d like to share with our community, don’t hesitate to click the “Submit a worksheet” button at the bottom of this page, because we’d love to see your creation.

You can dive into our collection of first-day-of-school worksheets in a few different ways. If you’re not sure where to start, you can take a look at the top ten most popular worksheets - or search our collection using the search box at the top of this page. If you’d rather browse, you’ll see that all our worksheets can be previewed in handy “Quick View” mode, so you can get a good look at their first pages before you download them.

BusyTeacher’s 265 first-day-of-school worksheets are here whenever you need them - so don’t forget to bookmark this page, and come back whenever you need some ready-made resources for the first day of your class. And when you find something you like, just download it, print it, and use it - it’s all here for you!

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Find Someone Who (for Korean students)

Find Someone Who (for Korean students)

Worksheet that gets students in a conversation class to mingle with each other. It focuses on things Korean students would find easy to discuss, but can easily be adapted to students from any othe ...
5 Views 8,635 Pre-IntInt
Introductory Board Game for Intermediate Level

Introductory Board Game for Intermediate Level

This is an first-day board game to help students get to know each other and get them talking in English. Lower to mid intermediate level. Played in groups of 3-4. Students flip a coin and move two ...
9 Views 20,456 Pre-IntInt
Revision Questions for Beginners

Revision Questions for Beginners

, Back to School
This worksheet contains questions which are not in a correct order - students must make sentences and then they work in pairs and ask each other. It is for beginners - I prepared it for my student ...
5 Views 10,987 BegElem
Personal Information Worksheet

Personal Information Worksheet

, Back to School
This is a worksheet with some sentences to be completed with personal information. Students fill some blank spaces with the words that better cmplete the sentences.
5 Views 22,490 Beg
Answers : Why Take a Gap Year?

Answers : Why Take a Gap Year?

This worksheet contains the answers and summary concerning the video " why take a gap year?". My students sum it up in French since it is their mother tongue. Nevertheless you can adapt the third ...
9 Views 9,497 IntAdv
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24 Question Cards [General Questions]

24 Question Cards [General Questions]

24 general questions to cut out and have students ask each other. This was very useful because the topics are varied and random, containing different structures, so it's good to get people speakin ...
56 Views 58,169 Pre-IntInt
Listening Comprehension: Why Take a Gap Year?

Listening Comprehension: Why Take a Gap Year?

This worksheet is composed of three parts: in the first one, the students must answer the questions about the global comprehension. In the second one, they must answer questions as well but more p ...
8 Views 24,546 IntAdv
Introduce Yourself!

Introduce Yourself!

Most teachers need their students to introduce themselves to them and to their other classmates especially for their first time and they need to know some information about them, this sheet can he ...
23 Views 29,709 All
First Week Get-to-Know-You Lesson Plan

First Week Get-to-Know-You Lesson Plan

First week of class Lesson Plan: This 2- to 3-hour lesson plan provides your learners with practice in all four skills (Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking) as well as Grammar and Vocabulary. ...
19 Views 41,728 Pre-IntInt
Balloon Guessing Game As Getting-To-Know-You Whole Class Fun Activity

Balloon Guessing Game As Getting-To-Know-You Whole Class Fun Activity

A fun whole class activity for the first day of class! It stirs up conversation and makes your students comfortable with each other. It can also be used as a warmer or filler when you feel the nee ...
13 Views 20,307 ElemPre-IntIntAdv
Find Someone Who... After Summer Holidays

Find Someone Who... After Summer Holidays

A class mingle in the 'Find someone who' format. Topic covers activities students may have done during the summer holidays. Each line has a picture and the topic. Students ask the question, and th ...
24 Views 76,173 ElemPre-Int
Ice-breaking and Hand-shaking

Ice-breaking and Hand-shaking

This is a set of cards for a mingling activity for a new group of students who don't know each other very well. It is supposed to be used at the first or one of the first lessons. The students go ...
19 Views 23,179 Pre-IntIntAdv
Yo-Yee School Subjects: Flashcards/Pictionary

Yo-Yee School Subjects: Flashcards/Pictionary

Yo-Yee School Subjects - Flashcards / Pictionary worksheet for young students. You can hand out this worksheet as a Pictionary / Vocabulary List. Also students can circle the correct answer of th ...
17 Views 24,740 Elem
Classroom Language

Classroom Language

A set of all the expressions and words that can be used during the classes. It helps you to organize your lessons without using your native language. It is also a good idea to introduce it at the ...
10 Views 15,847 All
Thematic Book 1: Back to School

Thematic Book 1: Back to School

This is a mini Dictionary for kids. The subject is back to school: you can find pictures and words of objects related to school (mainly school material). The kids have to read the words and then t ...
7 Views 9,926 Beg
School [the verb to be, word order]

School [the verb to be, word order]

This worksheet focuses on practising word order as well as punctuation and spelling. It is based on 4th grade book. Students need to put the punctuation marks and words in the correct order. There ...
5 Views 15,842 BegElem
School: Favourite Subject

School: Favourite Subject

Back to School,
This worksheet focuses on reading and writing skills. Students complete the table with information about themselves and their friends as well as reading comprehension. Some basic words and grammar ...
13 Views 20,500 BegElem
School Subjects

School Subjects

Back to School,
This document focuses on school subjects, the basic ones. It is possible to edit the document according to the teacher's wish. It is based on the coursebook evolution, 4th grade. It focuses on spe ...
4 Views 10,548 BegElem
Class Commands

Class Commands

, Back to School,
Print this pdf file and hand one per student. The purpose of this file is to use in the very first class so students get familiar with the use of some expressions in the class. You can start by cu ...
10 Views 20,379 BegElem
Self-assessment Sheet for Students

Self-assessment Sheet for Students

» » Back to School
This activity is for an introductory lesson with a new group. It may also be used at a back-to school lesson. I find it useful to ask students to assess their own skills, get them talking about th ...
10 Views 18,466 All
Greetings PowerPoint Presentation

Greetings PowerPoint Presentation

, Back to School
this is a powerpoint greeting activity for very very young learners. For your first course it might be very helpful. It teaches greeting someone in some different ways. First it teaches saying hi ...
20 Views 51,642 Beg
Getting to Know My Students

Getting to Know My Students

, Back to School
This is not meant for your students, but yourself! I have made this one to get to know my new students a little better. Knowing what like to learn and what they're not very good at learning, I've ...
17 Views 50,571 ElemPre-IntIntAdv
School Timetable for Kids

School Timetable for Kids

Back to School,
This is a pdf school timetable for kids. It's a colourful timetable where children can write and practise names of school subjects, days of the weeks and hours. I made it for my students as pres ...
12 Views 22,043 BegElemPre-Int
Classroom Language

Classroom Language

This classroom language activity can be used in many ways, the easieast as a matching exercise once the sentences have been presented and practised in the classroom. It can also be used as a memo ...
19 Views 24,162 BegElem
Wikipedia Introduction

Wikipedia Introduction

This an exercise I use on the first day of class with new groups that I haven't met before. It's a nice alternative to having all your students coming up with robotic responses like my name is Pi ...
8 Views 11,297 IntAdvExam

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