Is Time on Your Side? Solutions for Making the Most of the Time You Have.

06 October 2016 / Leave a Comment
In this post, you'll get tips on how to save time. After all, time is always something we seem short of. Check out these time saving tips to see if any of them will help you out.

If you are struggling to fit it all in, then guess what? You are not alone. I can confidently say that every teacher I know has faced the crunch of time. Time is just not on our side. We run short to get all of the content in, time to remediate skills our students haven't mastered, time to complete grading, and time to complete all of our plans and preps. Therefore, the best we can do is make every minute count.

Strategies for Saving Time

1) Streamline Your Schedule

Schedule Cards FREEBIE!One of the first steps to saving time is to take a hard look at your schedule and block out the non negotiables.  Then, adhere to it no matter what. You might use your phone and set alarms to signal transitions. With ring tone options, you can select one that is pleasant. Another key to making your schedule work for you is to teach your expectations for each block. Develop routines for collecting homework, work stations, small group, transitions, etc. You can use pocket charts as a visual schedule of time, work stations assignments, small group assignments and rotations, and transition times. Finally, be sure to reinforce behaviors that help you stay on schedule. Whole brain learning has been shown to be very effective for attention grabbers and instructional practices.

2) Organize to Save Time

In this post, you'll get tips on how to save time. After all, time is always something we seem short of. Check out these time saving tips to see if any of them will help you out.
One way to teachers have found helpful in saving time is to organize teaching units in binders to expedite searching for, pulling, copying, and organizing your materials. This works well if you have printables that you use at selected times of the year. You can also do the same thing if you have electronic files, but often you have manipulatives or work stations you've prepared. To keep them from getting damaged or lost, you might find it helpful to pick up Sterlite or Rubbermade containers that you can label for the month you plan to use them. These options were available at Target and Michael's, but you may find similar items in your favorite discount store or on Amazon. If you organize your materials right when you use them, you'll be all set for subsequent years.

3) Keep on top of Student Work

In this post, you'll get tips on how to save time. After all, time is always something we seem short of. Check out these time saving tips to see if any of them will help you out.
As the year goes, we definitely have kids miss instructional time. It can be a chore to keep up with who has missed what and even worse, who has missing work out. To address this issue, you might use 2 pocket folders in the same color for all students. Any time the student leaves the room or is absent, that folder is placed on the students desk by either that student or the neighboring student on absence days. On the left side of the folder, place all classwork materials (notes, handouts, and required work) and on the right side of the folder, place assigned homework. The key is to never let the folder go home. When the student returns, he/she handles the transferring of the work to binders or homework folders.

Another time saver for work is to assign your students a student number that is put on everything that is turned into you. By doing this, you can quickly alphabetize items, know which number is missing, and quickly return work to your students' mailboxes. (shoe organizer). If you number clothes pins, you can also keep track of who missed homework by having them clip their clothespin to the subject they missed. I would definitely not display this publicly though. Remember the goal is to improve organization not embarrass the child.

4) Take Advantage of Organizational Aids

What's work best for me is to color code EVERYTHING. Keep all math plans, papers, and materials in your red folder, green for science, and all ELA materials in a specific colored basket or folder for each group you work with. For your ELA materials, you might keep it all near your guided reading table for easy access while your materials for other subjects may be best kept with the manipulatives you use often. To keep it cheap, I live at the Dollar Tree. I have way more baskets than any teacher could possibly need, but it keeps everything neat and tidy the way I like it.

Another tool you might check out or consider using is colored duct tape. I labeled my books in my library with a strip of colored tape to match the approximate reading levels of the books, and I've used the colored tape for color coding interactive notebook bindings for quick grouping. If students want to show their creativity, you can even let them decorate their writing notebooks with decorative duct tape so that they're easy to recognize. Any time you can break down a step, it saves time down the road.

In this post, you'll get tips on how to save time. After all, time is always something we seem short of. Check out these time saving tips to see if any of them will help you out.Finally, I love the latest invention for plastic baggies. Have you seen these? Imagine how you can use them for grouping. If you need certain math manipulatives for a certain small group, bag them by color. The idea a friend and I thought of was to use them for word study. I normally have no more than four word study groups, so each group could be a different color.

What time savers have you discovered? Do you have special organizational tips you'd like to share? Please be sure to comment with what works. After all, you might just save your teacher friends in cyberland lots of time.

Until next time, happy reading!

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