First Day Selfies

📝 This post, First Day Selfies, was originally published in 2018 and has been updated with new information and resources.

These days selfies are being taken everywhere! People snap selfies at restaurants, parks, museums, sporting events, and just about everywhere else. Selfies help us remember experiences and share them with friends and family.

To kick off the school year, we create our own first day of school selfies! We do not use phones, of course. Instead, the selfies we create are meant to be shared with classmates so students can learn a little more about one another as the school year begins..

This Activity Can Also Be Used

💡 during the first week of school 
💡 after a school break
💡 after a field trip 
💡 after a special event or holiday
💡 on the last day of school (then compare)

Creating a First Day Selfies

Here is how we create our first-day-of-school selfies in first grade.

Materials Needed

✔️Selfie templates
✔️crayons, markers or colored pencils
✔️scissors
✔️glue
✔️colored paper for mounting

Before Beginning

Before creating our selfies, we spent some time talking about selfies and when people take them. I asked my students if they knew what a “selfie” is.  They were able to answer the question easily, and I have no doubt your students will do the same! I then followed up with these additional questions:

❓When do we take selfies?
❓Who is usually in a selfie?
❓Why do we take selfies?
❓Where might we take selfies?

After answering the questions, read the book Goodnight Selfie. I came across it a few years after I started doing First Day of School Selfies, and it is absolutely perfect for this activity!

Goodnight Selfie by Scott Menchin

After getting her brother’s old camera phone and learning to take selfies, one little girl snaps photos of everything she does. But after a day full of selfies and adventures, she discovers that both kids and camera phones need time to recharge!

Take a Selfie

Tell students they are going to “take a selfie” to help them remember the first day of school. Explain that they will not actually be taking a photograph. Instead, they will be drawing a picture of themselves inside the phone template.

Have students decide where they want to take their selfie. Their selfie can take place at school, at home, or at a place they visited over the summer.

Then have students draw themselves on the “screen” of their phone. Encourage them to include details and draw the background carefully so classmates can learn more about them.

Add a Hashtag

After the selfies were finished, we talked about hashtags. I asked students what they already knew about hashtags and then explained why people use them. In this case, we were not using hashtags to make our posts searchable. Instead, students used hashtags to share something about themselves and describe what was happening in their selfie. Students loved creating their own hashtags, and it became a fun way to encourage conversation, creativity, and classroom community.

📝This activity is a great way to assess some beginning-of-the-year skills, such as handwriting, spelling, and drawing skills.

Share Our First Day Selfies

 After their selfies were finished and hashtags were added, students colored their phones, cut them out, and mounted them on colored paper. We shared our selfies with one another and learned a little more about our classmates as the school year began.

Add a Text

I recently added a text feature to this activity so students can write about the experience shown in their selfie. It is a great extension for students who are already writers, adding an extra layer of challenge to the activity.

This activity quickly became a student favorite and made a wonderful keepsake from the beginning of the school year. I also loved using the finished selfies for our back-to-school bulletin board display.

💚 Grab First Day Selfies from TPT here!

Where will your students take their first day selfies? I would love to hear your ideas in the comments!