10 Ways Parents Can Set Their Child Up for Success at the Start of a New School Year

The start of a new school year is full of new beginnings. New teachers, new classmates, and new learning opportunities but they can also feel overwhelming for children and parents alike. The good news is that helping your child have a successful school year doesn’t require anything but a little planning and your time. The biggest difference comes from simple, consistent routines and a positive attitude toward learning. Here are 10 easy ways you can help your child start the school year with confidence.

Adjust Sleep Schedules Before School Starts

As the school year begins, gradually move bedtime and wake-up time closer to the school schedule. Children who get enough sleep have better attention, memory, and emotional regulation, making it easier to learn and participate in class.

Create Consistent Morning and Evening Routines

Predictable routines reduce stress and help children know what to expect. Practice packing backpacks, choosing clothes the night before, eating breakfast, and following a bedtime routine. When mornings are less rushed, everyone starts the day on a more positive note.

Read Together Every Day

Reading for just 15–20 minutes each day builds vocabulary, comprehension, and a love of books. Let your child choose books that interest them, and don’t hesitate to reread favorite stories. Repeated reading improves fluency and confidence.

Talk About Feelings

Many children feel nervous about the first days of school. Ask open-ended questions like:

• What are you excited about?
• Is there anything you’re worried about?
• What do you hope this year will be like?

Listening without immediately trying to “fix” their worries helps children feel heard and supported.

Encourage Independence

Practice everyday skills that children will use at school. Have them zip their backpack, open lunch containers, tie their shoes, organize school supplies, and clean up after themselves. These small tasks build confidence and self-reliance.

Keep Learning Part of Everyday Life

Learning doesn’t only happen at school. Count groceries, measure ingredients while cooking, read signs while driving, write shopping lists, or play educational games together. These simple activities strengthen reading, math, and problem-solving skills naturally.

Limit Screen Time Before School Begins

As summer comes to an end, begin reducing recreational screen time and replacing it with reading, outdoor play, family conversations, or creative activities. This transition can help children readjust to the attention and focus needed during the school day.

Build a Positive Mindset About School

Children often mirror the attitudes of the adults around them. Speak positively about teachers, learning, and making mistakes as part of growing. Even if your child is anxious, remind them that everyone is learning together and that it’s okay to ask for help.

Connect With Your Child’s Teacher

Early communication creates a strong home-school partnership. Share any important information about your child’s strengths, interests, learning needs, or concerns. Teachers appreciate knowing what helps your child succeed, and working together benefits everyone.

Celebrate Effort Over Perfection

Instead of focusing only on grades or getting every answer correct, praise your child’s hard work, persistence, kindness, and willingness to try new things. A growth mindset helps children become resilient learners who understand that mistakes are opportunities to learn. There is no such thing as the “perfect” back-to-school family. Some mornings will be rushed, homework won’t always go smoothly, and everyone will have challenging days.

What matters most is providing your child with love, encouragement, predictable routines, and the confidence to keep trying. Small actions practiced consistently throughout the first few weeks of school can have a lasting impact on academic success, independence, and emotional well-being.

As a parent, you are your child’s first teacher. By creating supportive routines, encouraging curiosity, and celebrating growth, you’re helping build the foundation for a successful and enjoyable school year.

Here’s to a wonderful school year filled with learning, confidence, and new adventures!

How I Can Become a New Successful Teacher

This year I started teaching fourth grade at a new school. The school is incredibly high performing with a wide variety of curricular options. Students come to school ready to learn and are well prepared for the rigorous curriculum.

Below is a summary of the first weeks of school systems I have created for student success. Additionally, I am learning how to effectively introduce new textbook and online resources available to me to support differentiated learning opportunities for individual students.

Building Ready to Learn Systems Within My Classroom

• Planning a student flow of activities that include creating bins for students to turn in their work and also the weekly envelope with correspondence to parents. Added bins are organized for student lunches, water bottles, and personal school supplies, and books.
• Classroom rewards include point system tracking for the whole class, by table assignments, or through individual accomplishments. Whole class rewards include additional free time and planned fun activities. Individual students are rewarded with stickers, grab bag classroom supplies, or a special treat.
• Behavior consequences are developed that includes completing a behavior communication form for parents when a student is not able to conform to classroom and school behavior guidelines.
• Student completion of homework is tracked online and must be reviewed and managed by the classroom teacher.

Creating Curricular Systems of Teacher Support

• Writing prompts are created for students to write reflections in their journals each morning.
• Daily writing lessons are taught using the Heinemann textbook assignments.
• Daily math lessons are taught using the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Go Math textbook assignments.
• Three times each week, students are taught basic science concepts through hands on experiments.
• Two times each week, students are taught social studies using TCI curricular units.

In my next few blog posts, I will share how my new students respond to my teaching strategies for each academic subject. These reflections can help teachers consider modifications when implementing new curricular subjects throughout the school year.

Planning for Students with Special Needs

I often feel very privileged to have an amazing team of teachers that I work with every day. My team is dedicated, passionate, and willing to do whatever it takes to help our students grow. My school receives recognition for the way teachers support students with special needs. Families and elementary schools recommend my school to other families because of the amazing work we do to include students with special needs in the general education classroom while still providing the supports they need to succeed. 

Parents are the Students Best Advocates

Even though I think I work with some of greatest teachers, the strongest advocates I know for students with special needs are their parents. Even if your child is at an amazing school with amazing staff and teachers, it’s still important for parents to advocate for what they know is best for their child.

The amazing thing about the beginning of a new school year is that it allows families with students who have an IEP to review how the previous year went and to plan for the upcoming year. It’s important that families not wait for the school to reach out to the family. You know your child best, so be proactive and communicate your child’s needs!

Study Last School Year’s IEP to Plan for the New School Year

Here are some things you can do during in the next few weeks to prepare:

• Review your child’s IEP goals from the previous year. If your child was successful, how can you push him or her and the school to get to the next level in the upcoming year. If your child did not meet the IEP goals, determine where they fell short. Then, think about what you, your child, and/or the school needs to do to make that learning and growth happen next year.
• Look at the standards for the upcoming grade level for your child. You can find them just by Googling your state + K-12 Standards. They are dense, but try to read through them and think about what your child will need in order to access and master these standards. This is not about you being the expert. It is about making sure you are aware so you can advocate for your child.
• Talk to your child. Ask them about what they learned last year and what they hope to accomplish next year. Ask them what helped them feel successful and ask them what barriers they encountered. Use these conversations to help them learn how to improve and use the information to help you be a stronger advocate for your child.
• Practice IEP skills at home if you feel you can support your child.  If their IEP goals are behavioral, help them practice those skills; learning should not stop just because it’s a new school year. If the goals are academic, have your child engage in skills that are related to keep the learning fresh throughout the school year.  Keeping your child up to pace will help ensure they can hit the ground running in the fall.

Math + Reading = Summer Growth!

Summer learning is not a new concept. Schools have always pushed summer literacy through reading challenges, summer reading lists, and regular visits to the library. But as we push for kids to not backslide during the time away from school, we often neglect a higher area of need for many students: math!

As an educator, I talk with more parents who are tentative about their ability to help their kids with math at home than those who are hesitant to push reading. In most families, parents feel comfortable having an expectation that kids read at home or that kids participate in family reading time. This is largely because parents feel more comfortable with reading than math. Reading is a skill that many students can practice independently, especially as they get older. I would never discourage any parent from having a summer reading expectation for their child. Rather, I encourage parents to make time for both reading and math practice during the summer. Here are some ways you can practice math with you kids during the summer months.

Practice Multiplication Tables and Flash Cards

I do realize that this is will not be the first thing your kids want to do. Furthermore, I do realize that new math standards are asking kids to develop a stronger number sense and deeper levels of mathematical understanding. I also know that one of the key skills that holds kids back as they get into higher levels of math is their inability to do math quickly in their heads. Sadly, I regularly see kids in middle school using their fingers to add, subtract and multiply. While rote memorization of math facts is not a standard in most states, it is something that will help kids succeed as grow. Kids who can do simple math (multiplication, addition, subtraction, division) in their heads, are far more successful and can learn complex math more quickly than peers who still struggle with these basic facts. At home, parents can print out multiplication tables or use flash cards with their kids to practice. This will make a world of difference when they return to school.

Practice Verbal Math Problems

Give kids verbal math problems while you drive or when they are bored at home. For example, on the way to the store you can say, “If I went to the store and I bought 10 apples, then Daddy eats three when we get home, how many apples will we have left?” Just giving them opportunities to practice the skill of understanding these problems and doing the math will help hone their ability to think mathematically in all areas of their lives. Of course, you would need to change the difficulty or complexity for older students.

Solve Home Maintenance and Cooking Math Problems

Have your kids help with home projects and cooking. I have recommended this in previous blogs because it brings math into real world experiences. If you’re planning your 4th or July or end of summer cookout, you can say, “One person would eat 2 hot dogs. We’re going to have 23 people. How many hot dogs will we need. (46). Good! Now, hot dogs come in packs of 8. How many packs should we buy?” There are many examples like this, just try to include your kids when you’re doing home math!

Math Learning Can Be Fun

During the summer, let’s push both math and literacy to keep our kids sharp for the next school year!  Comment below if you have any summer math ideas!

Avoiding the Summer Learning Slump

My brothers and I recently went to breakfast during a week when we all visited my father in our home town. As we usually do when we visit home, we reminisced about our childhood, fun events, and experiences we have reminisced many times. Since we were visiting during the summer months, we talked about summer street fairs, days spent biking around the neighborhood, playing street hockey and basketball at the local park, and cookouts in our backyard. We also discussed my mom and how she organized our summer experience.  We didn’t realize it then, but the experience she gave us is one that I have shared with countless families in my role as a school principal, as it ensured a strong balance of fun, responsibility, and learning.

How Parents Can Structure Time

One of the pitfalls of the summer is the abundance of free time kids have. As parents, we must be intentional about helping kids fill that time when they are young so they build the life habits they need to lead productive lives as teens and adults. My mom had the perfect approach that kept my brothers and me productive, but allowed us to have a healthy balance of fun. She made sure that we had daily tasks or chores to complete. We had limited screen time and we always had time and resources for reading.

The Value of Chores

For chores, we had a list of To Dos that she wrote and had on the counter before we even woke up.  We got breakfast, were able to relax a bit, but then we had to get started on our chores. These included cleaning, organizing, and helping out with all the yard work. Each day was different, but we knew the routine and were able to do the things we wanted to do once the work was done. This was not only effective for running our household, but it also helped us learn the important life lesson of not procrastinating or putting off what needs to get done first.

Coupon Time Rewards

Although my childhood was in the 80s and 90s, and screens were far less ubiquitous than they are these days, we did have a TV and a computer. There was still plenty of entertainment between movies, TV, and games that could easily fill a day, but mom created coupons for us.  When we finished the chores for the day, we earned 30 minutes of screen time. We could earn extra time, up to 90 minutes per day, by doing extra chores or by doing extra reading. She also encouraged us to save our screen time so we could watch a movie as a family a couple of times a week. We often saved our minutes so we could participate in the family movie time.

Reading for Fun

In terms of summer learning, she made sure that we were always prepared to read. Each year on the first day of summer, we would go to the book store and each of us would get to buy a couple of books. We also took regular visits to the library so we could supplement our book collection. This helped if we didn’t make the best book choice at the beginning of the summer, or if we got through our original book selections quickly. As part of our summer requirements, we were expected to read for at least 30 minutes per day.

Creating Meaningful Summers

Finally, and possibly most important, we were not allowed to say we were bored. We had chores, earned screen time, enjoyed a room full of books, and explored the wonderful outdoors. If she heard us say we were bored, even if it was not said directly to her, she would fill the entertainment void with more chores. We learned quickly to find new adventures outside, or to enjoy more relaxation time reading our books.

I am eternally grateful for the summers my mother designed for my brothers and me. As I now try to create meaningful summers for my daughter, I realize the effort and planning my mom had to put in to make sure our summers were time well spent. I appreciate the life lessons she taught us without my brothers and me even being aware of the lesson at the time. I encourage all parents to think about how you can structure summers for your kids. And as you design what works best for you and your family, remember to always include summer reading!