Effective Organizational Strategies to Help Teachers Save

Time and Energy

Steve, Patty, Jamie, Tracy, ChristalTEED 540

May 8, 2009

Why Be Organized?

How it relates to student success, motivation and a positive classroom

Preparation

• If you plan to learn, you MUST learn to plan!– Short term: Day to day– Long term: Unit plan or syllabi

• Effective teachers have procedures to help students stay organized.

• Classroom Routines

Promoting Clear and Shared Classroom Expectations: The Cornerstone of the Effective Classroom

1. Clear expectations

2. Create and model a civil environment for the students

3. Respect your students

4. Be positive

5. Be a source of consistency and reliability

I.D. Behavioral ExpectationsInstructor responsibilities:

• Start and end class on time.• Treat all students with courtesy and respect.• Be open to constructive input from students in the course.• Ensure that opportunities to participate are enjoyed equally by all

students in the course.

Student responsibilities:

• Come to class on time, and refrain from packing up belongings before class ends.

• Turn off all electronic devices that might create a disruption in class.• Be quiet and give full respectful attention while either instructor or

another student is speaking.• When speaking, use courteous, respectful language and keep

comments and questions relevant to the topic at hand.

Organize the classroom

• KISS: keep it simple, stupid

• Know where they are

• Clear labeling• Teach the

students where to find “it”

Arranging Desks Where do you start?

- “You need to make sure that you are arranging your classroom in a way that is accurately and effectively portraying your own personal educational philosophy while simultaneously allowing students to interact and move about in ways that you want or need them to.”

Ask yourself? Do you want your students facing you or their classmates? Do you want to all be facing each other in a circle?

Some research shows:

“Students seated in circles engage in significantly more on-task behavior than those in rows.”

“Students seated in clusters engage in more on-task behavior than those in rows, but less than circles.”

How it Looks

Rows

Circle

Your Desk

The Ideal Setup

The Worst Way

Clusters

Front

Your Desk

Practical Yet Effective

The Paper Trail: Handouts and Grading

Organized or not, we deal with a lot of paper!

Distributing HandoutsWhy do for students what they can easily do for

themselves?

• Place your handouts for the day in a specific place (near the door if you can)

• Train students to pick up a copy as they walk into the classroom. Then you don’t have to spend time passing them out!

• At the end of the day, you can put them wherever you decide to keep them.

Having Students Hand Papers In

• Inbox, baby, inbox. • Now, your inbox could have a

separate section for each period.• Or, you could have a file crate for

each period, in which each person has a file folder.

• If you have students pass papers in, have them pass across rows to cut down on harder to see, disruptive behavior.

Tips for Grading

1. You don’t have to grade everything. 2. You can let kids trade papers and grade each

other. 3. Kids learn from self-grading too. 4. Make your policies known early on and stick

to them. 5. And most importantly, Be Consistent…

…Grading Tips…

Answer keys:• Assign point values for each problem when

you write up your answer key• If you give partial credit, also assign partial

points for common mistakes

…Grading Tips…

Multi-page assignments and exams:• Grade one page for all students at a time.

– This lets your brain focus only on one set of questions at a time.

• Add the point total for each page and write it at the bottom of the page.

• Once you’ve graded all the pages for all students and you have point totals for each page, add up all the page totals to get the final score. This way, you only have to add a few numbers instead of a ton.

…Grading Tips…

Using Rubrics:• If using a standard rubric that you have given

students, you could print a mini version and circle feedback in place of writing it. You can still give corrective feedback, this is just for the stuff already on your rubric.

• Or, simply print out a score sheet so students can see the score they received for each section.

…Grading Tips…

Due Dates:• Depending on your school/district, you might

be able to stagger due dates among your classes. – You’d have to adjust your lessons for each class,

so you might be able to do this in a couple years

Handing Back Graded Papers

• Handing them back yourself: arrange papers beforehand so they are in order according to your seating chart. It takes time to save time, sometimes.

• File crate with files for each student: put kids’ papers in their files. Takes time, but at least not during class. Have kids clean out their folders at the beginning or end of the week at the very least.

• If you have a single outbox and want kids to help you pass them back: write the score on the back page of an assignment or fold the paper over the score to preserve some privacy.