Day 4 – 5 Days to a Better School Year Challenge

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Welcome to Day 4 of the 5 Days to a Better School Year Challenge!

Every day this week I’m asking you to reflect on something specific from last school year that annoyed/bothered you and help you take action to change it for this upcoming school year.

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Classroom behaviors and routines don’t change without being intentional about it – being intentional now can make next year so much better!

If you missed any of the previous challenges, check out the Day 1 Challenge, Day 2 Challenge, or Day 3 Challenge.

Or, you can find the Day 5 Challenge here!  

Today's Challenge

Today, we are going to reflect on a routine task this past year that was taking up too much of your time and could be passed off to either a student or a parent.

Follow the steps below to complete the challenge.  You can use this Day 4 Challenge Printable Worksheet to help you write out a plan.

 1.  Think of about a task that you had to do regularly that could be passed off to either a student or a parent.

Consider easy, routine tasks that take up class time, your planning time, or time with your family at home.

For example, cleaning up the classroom, passing out papers, feeding class pets, cutting out centers/games, changing bulletin boards, organizing your classroom library, passing out missed work to students who were absent, organizing manipulatives, sharpening pencils, etc.

2.  Now, spend a little time researching how other teachers have used classroom jobs and parent volunteers in the classroom to help save time.

I’ve listed some links to articles that could help you address common classroom jobs and parent volunteers.  Some of these articles are from Teaching Made Practical, but most of them are from teachers that have found different ways to address these issues.

You can also do a quick Google Search or a search on Pinterest to see how other teachers have addressed the behavior that is bothering you. Chances are, you aren’t the only one dealing with it!

3.  Finally, come up with a plan to have either students or parents (or both) help out with at least one teaching task this year.

Ideally, you will write down what steps you need to take to in order to try this out.  (You can use this Day 4 Challenge Printable Worksheet to help.)  How will you integrate or update your classroom job routines? How will you utilize parent volunteers? What can you do now to prepare?

Comments 9

  1. I have had great success with parents helping with book clubs, copying weekly assignments, and allowing students to take charge of bulletin boards (only if they have completed all daily assignments). I find students truly enjoy being the classroom helper instead of just a participant. At the end of the year, I provide sign up sheets for students to teach a 15 or 30 minute lesson that they are an expert and teach the class. This allows them to experience being a teacher and understanding the challenges we face daily in the classroom, too. I find this is a great way for students to have whether if it’s an interest (career) to pursue or another avenue is best.

  2. I love this! The information on managing the classroom (obsessive talking in the classroom). Oh my, thank you so much!!! I learned so much from this podcast!!

  3. I had a parent volunteer to be in charge of my hallway bulletin board. I did not realize what a great help this was. She came once a month, I gave her the items to hang up and she took down what was there. This year for back to school night I will add to my volunteer sheet a line for monthly bulletin board. Really it does not take a parent much time to do it, but for me I have to carve out a time in my day to accomplish a completed bulletin board.

  4. I have resisted using classroom job applications in the past because I felt it took too much time to have students complete the applications and then more time for me to go through all of them. However, after reading some of the articles/posts, I think I might try it this year. I like the idea of only having to change jobs once a quarter. What I usually do is change jobs weekly so everyone gets to do a different job. What I found was that the students never knew what their job was and for the lower key jobs, they weren’t getting done.

  5. This is tough because I like to be in charge of certain things in my classroom, but I did think about changing one of our routines- the way sharpening pencils runs in my room needs to be changed! I have tried a few different ideas, but I need to try some more to find something that works for me and my students.

  6. Question. I signed up for this challenge and I received day 1 and day 2 of The Challenge but I have not received any other days after that. What is going on?

    1. Post
      Author

      I’m not sure what happened! I’m sorry – I’m going to email you from my personal email address right now with the email I sent today, so look out for that!

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