“All About Me” Teacher Book (Back to School)
The beginning of the school year is all about getting to know your students and building relationships. I always share an “All About Me” (teacher version) on the first day of school for students to get to know me, their new teacher! I have used the same one (roughly) for 7 years, so this year I decided to spruce it up a little bit. I’m so happy with how it turned out!
My “All About Me” Book
Making the “All About Me” Teacher Book
I ended up using Canva to make my book this time, but I used PowerPoint to make my previous book (if you’re not sure how to make PowerPoint slides be the same size as paper, check out this blog post). You could even do scrapbooking for your all about me book! Last time I made my book portrait style. This time, I felt I could fit more in with landscape.
Once I finished creating my book, I printed it out and chose the “best” quality when printing. I then laminated each page using my personal laminator. Finally, I used a 3 whole punch on each page and put it all together with binder rings. A special tip: When creating/designing your book, be sure to leave about about 0.5″ across the side you plan to hole punch so you don’t cover up any words or content!
Other Classroom Books to Make
My classroom library has a bin that is specifically for books either I have made or my students have made. I let students keep 3 books at a time from my classroom library in their book boxes, and students love to grab these class books and read them throughout the year!
Nonfiction Class Books
Each year we do a nonfiction research unit where we make a class book first on an ocean animal. Then, students get to pick an ocean animal to make an individual book about. For the nonfiction class books, students get a white cardstock paper that is blank on one half and has handwriting lines on the other half. They then work on combining facts or recording a fact on their paper. Finally, they create an illustration to match. Several students also get to help out with the cover, back page, table of contents, and heading pages (they take their coloring jobs on these very seriously!). I then laminate all the pages & hole punch it to make a class book.
At this point I have 5 books my first grade classes have made that are put in the book bin. Students LOVE to grab these books for their book boxes to read. They especially love getting to find older friends and siblings who have been in my class and read/see what they created.
Flat Person Book
Each year we do a Flat Stanley-type project (which I love since I did it as a first grader, too)! Students get to decorate a blank person cut-out to look like them and then mail it off to a relative, friend, or whoever. We get those back in December and share them throughout the month.
Then in March we let students take their flat person on spring break and they get to document their own adventures, if they wish. One year I went to Disney World over spring break and made my own flat person to take. I shared the book with my class when I returned (complete with a surprise cameo from a first grade I ran into at Animal Kingdom from a different class) and they loved it! I keep this book in our class book bin and students have read and enjoyed it for years after.
Other Ideas
Some other class books you could make are:
- All About Our Class book– have each student make their own page and put it all together!
- My Summer Vacation
- My Winter Break
- Classroom Memories– document a whole year with one class and create a book that you can share at the end of the year (and your new classes can see all the fun things they will get to do!)
- ABC book– have students create a page for each letter
- and more!
I can’t wait to share my new book with my class this year and let them know a little more about me. How do you let your students get to know you at the beginning of the school year?
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