3 ready-made lessons to build a strong foundation for the new school year
Thomas Courtley
Education Specialist
The start of a new school year is all about setting the tone. To help you begin with clarity and connection, we turned to our LessonUp teacher panel: a growing group of over 1,200 teachers who share ideas and insights from their classrooms.
Together, we’ve developed three new lesson starters designed to help you lay a strong foundation: from reconnecting after the break to co-creating classroom rules. These lessons help you build a safe, structured environment where students feel seen, heard, and ready to learn.
Back-to-school quiz: reflect, reconnect, and look ahead
This structured quiz invites students to reflect on the break, catch up on what they missed, and share their thoughts for the year ahead:
- Holidays – What did they do? What moments stood out?
- News & pop culture – What happened in the world? What music defined the summer?
- Expectations – What do they look forward to? What do they want to learn?
Use this lesson to activate prior knowledge, ease into conversation, and start building relationships right away.
True or false? Getting clear on school rules
Start the year with an open and respectful conversation about how your school works:
- Begin with true-or-false statements about school rules to test and refresh knowledge.
- Follow with open questions: Which rules make sense? Which feel unfair?
- Wrap up with a class discussion around one specific rule that students choose to focus on.
This lesson encourages critical thinking and shared understanding: laying the groundwork for a respectful classroom dynamic.
This is how we work together
Instead of presenting a fixed list of rules, this lesson gives students a chance to co-create them:
- Ask reflective questions like: How do you prefer to work? What's important to you?
- Gather answers, identify themes, and decide together on the class’s top five rules.
- Use these shared values as the basis for your classroom agreement.
An inclusive, collaborative approach to rules can make all the difference, because students are more likely to follow what they’ve helped to shape.
