5 Ways to Simplify Teaching in the New Year
I don’t know about you, but I am revamping quite a bit in my classroom come January 3rd. Last year was a mess, the beginning of this year was a bit of a mess, and I think my students and I could seriously benefit from a regroup. I’ve got plans for new seating charts, classroom reorganization, better slideshows, some reteaching, and more scaffolding.
While some things in my classroom haven’t been working as I had hoped, there are several big components of class that have been going really well, and I wanted to share. One of my strengths as a teacher is my ability to streamline and simplify. These five things save my sanity on a weekly basis because they help preserve my energy, keep me organized, and they hold my students accountable for great work.
Create a few simple systems that you use (over and over again) on a daily or weekly basis. Routines soothe students’ anxiety, improve on-task behavior, minimize behavior problems, and build skills. If you aren’t beginning your class with a simple Do Now, you’ve got to start! Whatever you choose to have students do--it will get them settled and focused more quickly. I ask a question of the day, and students must respond in at least two complete sentences. On a weekly basis, I do book talks, which get students excited and engaged in a new independent reading book each week. To read more about how to begin implementing book talks, check out this post. Monthly, I do book tastings to expose students to even more books, all at one time. Students always love this activity, so I highly recommend it.
Balance student-led and teacher-directed lessons. As you plan your week, pay attention to how many lessons are student-led and how many require you to be front and center. Learning how to vary the two will be a complete game-changer. Protecting your energy as an educator is probably the most important thing you can do to stay healthy and avoid burnout. I wrote all about how using stations changed my teaching life, here. And if you’d like to try some out yourself, check out these pre-reading stations. Implementing lessons that let students do most of the work once or twice per week enhanced students’ work quality, boosted engagement, and left me feeling more energized and positive about work at the end of the day.
Avoid grading clusters. When I realized I could take control of this, panicked paper piles ceased to exist in my life! The first step is to automate as many grades in your classroom as possible. Google forms, quick checks, or roll-call systems like page goals, which I use for independent reading accountability, all help to lighten the grading load. The next step is to stagger your big assignments like essays or projects so that you never have more than one to grade at once. Spread those kinds of grades out! It will alleviate so much stress. Finally, (in case you don’t do this already), toss some of those assignments in the recycling bin! You don’t need to grade everything.
Establish and maintain strong expectations. This is easiest when you can start at the beginning of the school year or after a long break. Choose a hill you’re willing to die on (for me it’s capital letters and periods), and set very clear expectations for them. I use this assignment to set the stage in my classroom, and it has worked WONDERS. Be ruthless about checking students’ work for those things that are important to you, and provide feedback often. When you are clear with your students about the kind of work they should be producing, you spend less time feeling frustrated or reteaching skills.
Rinse and repeat! Did you teach a great lesson? How can you repurpose it later in the unit? Did your students really enjoy a particular game or activity? How can you do it again using different content? Do not be afraid to reuse similar lessons or lesson formats again and again throughout the year. For example, when I discovered that my students loved practicing fluency by doing mini reader’s theaters, I made scripts for every short story we read! It never got old. Also, my students loved these prereading stations so much that I re-created them for a novel we’re about to start. There is no harm in doing this! It saves you creative energy, and it allows students to strengthen skills without having to learn new expectations.
I hope that at least one of these strategies resonates with you and can work in your classroom. They honestly lift a big weight off my shoulders that I carried around for my first three or four years of teaching. Put it down, gain back some energy and creative spirit, and let me know how it goes!
XO,
Kara & Riley
