3 things to copy at the end of the year to make your back to school time smoother

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?

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 materials
 (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 1^st 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,