Effective Classroom Management: Free Workbook & Support Group for Teachers
Are you a teacher feeling overwhelmed by back-to-school preparations?
It’s okay - you can love teaching but absolutely dread the insanity of back-to-school. Whether you are a new teacher, have changed grades, or are staying in the same grade, the first few weeks of school can be challenging. (It’s even more daunting if you are starting mid-year!)
There’s just never enough time to get ready before students arrive. And once classes begin, it’s go-go-go. Seating charts, sub plans, lesson planning, Open House, grading, conferences - the list never ends!
I've got a secret: having a solid plan for classroom routines and procedures doesn't just make the beginning of the school year easier; it makes the entire school year more manageable!
The Challenges of Classroom Organization & Management
You never have enough time to think about and plan all those make-or-break routines and procedures during teacher planning. And with so much to do during the first few weeks of school, you don’t necessarily end up with the best systems in place for your classroom.
Instead, you quickly pick something you read about or someone told you and hope for the best. But what works for someone else just may not work for you.
By the time you realize your classroom routines aren’t running as smoothly as you wish, you are already pretty far into the school year - and changing routines is so much harder than starting with them.
(Note: If this happens to you, make that change anyway! It isn’t easy, but it is better than continuing the year with something that isn’t working.)
The Solution to Classroom Organization & Management
Instead of setting up and running your classroom on the fly, spend some time thinking through each part of your classroom: the layout, the procedures, the rules, etc. Once you have a solid plan in place, you can move on to organizing your curriculum.
It sounds like a lot, but I have some free teacher planning resources that will help you get it done fast and efficiently:
The Upper Elementary Teachers’ Lounge
As someone who changed grades frequently and even moved between elementary and middle school, I often struggled to create systems that fit my classroom. After all, effective classroom routines and procedures in 7th grade aren’t necessarily great for 4th grade.
And it is hard to know what to expect when you move to a new grade:
What are students able to do academically?
What is their maturity level?
What do they need to be able to do by the end of the year?
What are some great lessons that work well with these standards?
It would have been great to be able to chat with teachers and get that information before school started. Sometimes I had teammates to ask, but other times I was on my own.
That’s why I created the Upper Elementary Teachers’ Lounge Facebook Group. I wanted a safe place where you could ask questions and get advice from teachers in your grade or the grades around you.
And it’s not just for Upper Elementary teachers - we have members in a wide variety of grades, especially teachers who need to differentiate lessons because they have students on an upper elementary level. It’s a great support group for teachers of all levels.
The Back-to-School Workbook
I created the Back-to-School Workbook to help you get organized. It’s 23 pages of questions, checklists, and tips to help you think through systems and procedures to make your classroom run smoother.
It’s everything I wished I had when I started teaching. It would have helped me focus on what I really needed for my class instead of only worrying about how pretty it was.
You can go through the workbook at your own pace - do one section each week over summer or do it all at once when you are ready. I also have blog posts to support you as you go through the workbook.
Download our FREE Back-to-School Workbook today to ensure that both you and your classroom are organized and ready for students!
Both of these resources are available to you for FREE. I want you to have the best school year ever!