There are many challenges that face Middle School teachers. There are also some serious benefits to teaching older students. The main benefit {in my opinion} is that the students are on their way to becoming young adults. They can be given more responsibility and be held accountable for things that teachers need to take care of in elementary school classrooms. I want to share with you some middle school classroom time savers to help improve the flow and efficiency of your classroom.
But first – a story! My first 6 years of middle school teaching were in a district that had 90 minute math blocks. There were days where those 90 minutes felt like 900 minutes, but I rarely felt pressed for time. When I started teaching in a new district that only had 45 minute math classes, I started to scramble for ways to save time. I had HALF the time to teach the exact same amount of material.
The first thing I did was cut back on passing out papers. I didn’t have time for that. To solve that problem, I hung an organizer by my classroom door. My students know to look at it each time they enter the room and grab whatever is hanging there. I did not put in assessments or things that were graded, but I did include things for their Interactive Notebooks and some classwork items. It was amazing.
The next thing I did was include on the warm up, all the materials they will need that day. Before they got settled, they knew to look and see what they need for the day. They knew where everything was kept in my room and could quickly get what they need and have a seat.
Collecting papers was also a chore, especially with my desks being close together and space being limited. I had trays, labeled by class period, on my front table. Homework and make up work got dropped off there in the beginning of class and classwork/exit tickets/etc. got dropped off here when students left. The work was automatically sorted by class, so I just had to grab it and go!
If you have any middle school classroom time savers, leave them in the comments!
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