6 Classroom Things
that make my life easier and 2 that bring delight
When things feel heavy (like today), I like to get practical. Because Karly’s CRAFT corner includes teaching ideas (the T in CRAFT), here is a bonus list of 6 classroom ideas that make my life as a 2nd grade public school teacher so much easier.
My bathroom system. I have this flip sign that signals to my students if it’s a good time to use the bathroom or not. If the sign says “you can go!” they don’t even need to ask. They can just grab a pass, sign the clipboard and go. If the sign says “not right now” they know not even to ask. When I am teaching a whole-group lesson is the only time the sign says “not right now”, and those lessons are never more than 20 minutes. This helps tremendously to lower the amount of interruptions while I’m teaching and keeps kids in the classroom for content instruction.
This clean up station. One of my classroom rules is if you make a mess, you clean it up. This station really helps with the clean up. It includes: real paper towels (instead of the totally useless school ones) to clean up water bottle spills, a little broom and tray to sweep up mud bits and scraps of paper, Clorox wipes to wipe tables at the end of the day, and Kleenex and hand sanitizer for sneezes and snot :) They don’t have to ask permission to use anything in these bins, they know to take care of it. It’s important to me to teach independence!!!
Free access to extra supplies. I have this shoe organizer hanging on our closet door with extra of all the supplies we regularly use. Again, they don’t have to ask me to get up to get something they need (cutting back on interruptions), but we do talk about how to know if you really need something new or how to fix/extend the life of a supply you already have. For example, they will always want a new dry-erase marker, but instead of getting a new one, how can we take care of them so they last longer? (PS pencils are kept at a different location)
Having a daily rotating teacher helper and a weekly rotating table leader. Instead of a job chart which can be time consuming and tedious to keep up with, I use a spinner website to choose a new teacher helper every day. If they are the teacher helper for the day, they get to do allllll the jobs for that day, including line leader, paper passer outer, errand runner, door holder, etc. If it’s your birthday, automatically the teacher helper, which makes them feel special for their special without me having to do anything extra. The table leader (marked by shapes on their tables) helps with sorting supplies and and passing out materials for their table and it rotates weekly. Both of things cover everything I would need getting done and seems totally fair to the kids.
Creating a place for students to wait to ask me a question. Nothing is more overstimulating to me than having kids walk up to me to ask me things or hand me a piece of paper. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, but when I’m teaching small groups it’s really important. I got these peel and stick numbered stars to create a place for them to wait, but last year I just used painters tape and made X’s on the tile.
Creating a rotating library system. I’m a big advocate of limiting the amount of stimuli and choices that kids have. I think it decreases anxiety and overwhelm to have less of each. This year I have created a rotating library system and it has helped them actually know what their options are and they’ve been using it a lot more. I usually have one monthly theme like “fall” or “winter” or “Valentine’s” books, but I also find books about out school’s monthly character word, which for January is respect. I’ve also utilized our public library to bring in Vox books into my classroom this year which, if you are unfamiliar, are picture books that have voice recordings that read the story aloud. It is great for emerging readers to have access to more books.
Now for two things that just bring me pure delight in my classroom:
My disco ball planter. Bringing this to school brought me instant delight. The light! The magic! The joy of 10 second disco dance parties!
Bringing my own mug to pour coffee into. I used to bring coffee in a to-go cup, but now I’ve been pouring it from the stainless steal mug to a ceramic one. Huge quality increase.
I definitely could do a part two (and 3, 4, and 5) of this and might in the future. Thanks for tuning in for a niche teaching post!
That’s all for now,
xoxo
Karly