If this isn’t your first rodeo, you must now be a seasoned veteran in the art of making it to the copy machine before anyone else. Beginning of the year copying time is painful.
This is part 2 of the end of the year series.
Part 1: Is your end of year countdown hurting your students?
Part 1: Is your end of year countdown hurting your students?
I’m sure you’ve already discovered that the best
time to copy is at the end of the year.
Why? Because at the beginning of
the year you’re going to be too busy prepping your classroom and laminating all
the things. Nobody wants to stand in a
long line waiting to make copies only to have it finally be their turn and the
copy machine is jammed or out of ink.
You know copying now will be most
beneficial, but what do you copy exactly?
There are many things you could be putting in that feeder, but here are
three things to copy now so that the beginning of the year goes a lot smoother.
1. Lesson plans and correlating materials
Make sure you copy all of those beginning of the school year papers that
you’ll need the first 1-3 weeks. I like
to keep my things organized in bins. All
of my beginning of the year things are kept neatly in one space. At the end of the year, I pull it all out and
copy. Some of us don’t usually know how many students we will have the
following year, so just ballpark it.
Some people don’t dive right into the
curriculum until the second week of school, but when you do-it’s best to be
prepared.
2. Things that need to be laminated
Summer should be spent relaxing, but
it is also good to take at least 1-2 hours each week to start prepping things
for the next year. It is extremely exhausting
to print, cut, and laminate for hours on end those two weeks leading up to the
start of the year. Print now & cut
and laminate throughout the summer. Here's a list of things you will probably be laminating.
Nameplates
(focus wall headers, genre posters, phonics posters)
Class rules: Grab this Freebie in my store!
Schedule cards
3. Homework and packets
In recent years I discovered that
keeping track of homework was tiresome. The daily pile was overwhelming and some
days I couldn’t get to it. Not to
mention, how hard it was to keep track of who did or did not have their
homework. These past two years I have been putting my homework into weekly
packets. It has been a lifesaver! I only collect homework on Fridays and
correct over the weekend.
I also create a fluency sentences book
that each student gets at the beginning of the year. They include sight words
and the 1st grade phonics skills.
If you do packets of homework or you
hand out big packets like my fluency sentences, printing and stapling the
copies so that they are ready will preserve a bit of your sanity.
The end is near. We are ready to pack things up and be cool for the summer, but a little advanced prepping can save you time and sanity later. Run to that copy machine before someone jams it! ;)
Happy Teaching,
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